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THE 



Philosophy of History 



BY 

S. S. HEBBERD 



RE F IS ED EDITION 



MASPETH PUBLISHING HOUSE 

76 Milton Street 
BOROUGH OF QUEENS, NEW YORK 

1908 



»«i^ 



IC 



At^. jlJL 

I^RARY 0^ CONGWESS 
I OneCouv neceived 
I JAK 6 1908 

f CLASS A^AAcNo. 
1 OOPY V V.^ 



Copyright, 1907 

BY 

S. S. HEBBERD 



PREFACE 

Although the first edition of this book was favor- 
ably received, I soon began to feel that there was a 
certain obscurity and incompleteness in its argument. 
Six more years of study have shown me the source of 
the trouble, and at the same time wonderfully widened 
my vision of the great truth which I had been so long 
striving to comprehend and prove. Therefore this 
new edition is really a new book. The fundamental 
thesis remains the same, but the demonstration thereof 
differs as noon-day from early dawn. 

Undoubtedly the book is heavily handicapped by 
the very grandeur of its pretensions. It claims to solve 
moral and social problems universally recognized as 
the most momentous within the range of thought, but 
which have so long baffled all inquiry that to-day they 
are almost given up in despair. And the question nat- 
urally arises : How has it happened that a solution so 
simple and clear as that here given should have been 
so long overlooked? 

I answer that the genius of Hume, by reducing 
causality to mere sequence, closed up the only true path 
of philosophic inquiry for nearly two centuries. Kant, 
with his doctrine of illusionism, merely doubled the 



PREFACE 

barricade. Then physical science, seeking only to pre- 
dict, not to explain, soon found that the theory of in- 
variable sequence would answer its special purpose. 
Thus the concept of causality fell under taboo; it was 
certainly clouded with many ambiguities, and perhaps 
was altogether mythical. And yet, as this book will 
prove, in the comprehension of that concept lies the key 
to all the chief problems of philosophy. But modern 
philosophy, unable to answer Hume, has cast the key 
aside. That is the reason why these great problems 
have gone so long unsolved. 

Already the acutest critics are awakening to this fact. 
Thus Prof. Colvin has recently said^ that if metaphysics 
"ever succeeds in adding anything worthy of knowl- 
edge it must accept the fact that knowledge is knowl- 
edge in relation and that relation finds its sole content 
in the causal law." 

Furthermore, this book seems to also solve that social 
problem which now is vexing mankind as never before. 
For it proves from the experience of all ages that 
labor, when left free and untrammeled in the exercise 
of its rightful powers, tends always to unity. And that 
industrial unity, once fully attained, will soon put an 
end to the strife, the fraud and savagery of our modern 
life. 

But despite these grand pretensions, I know well how 
defective my exposition must be. For it has no fore- 

^Philesophical Review, XI., 151. 



PREFACE 

runners. Its many inductions, reaching over so vast and 
varied a field, have not been tested by the criticism of 
friend or foe. The work here begun is too great to be 
completed by any one man. I appeal, therefore, to the 
reader to aid me by pointing out errors of detail, and 
especially any seeming flaw in the main argument. 
Why despise a seeker after truth because he ventures 
upon a new and untried path? The old philosophy, 
with its vain subtleties, its paradoxes and equivoca- 
tions, is virtually extinct. Why, then, should we con- 
fine ourselves to the weary task of embalming the 
remains of the dead? 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Introduction. The Nature of Thought 15 

BOOK I. 

The Civilisation of India 

Chapter I. The Religion of India 39 

" II. Hindu Morality 51 

" III. The Science of India 60 

" IV. Indian Art 66 

" V. The Buddhistic Revolt 79 

" VI. Social Evolution in India 88 



BOOK II. 

Classical Civilisation 

Chapter I. Classical Religion 105 

II. Greek and Roman Morality 116 

III. Greek Science 126 

IV. Classical Art 135 

V. The Idealistic Protest 143 

VI. Social Evolution 149 



CONTENTS 

BOOK III. 
The Middle Ages 

PAGE 

Chapter I . The Catholic Religion 167 

" II. Mediaeval Morality 180 

" III. Science in the Middle Ages 189 

" IV. Mediaeval Art. 198 

" V. Social Evolution 209 



BOOK IV. 

Modern Civilisation 

■Chapter. I. The Protestant Religion 237 

" II. Modern Morality 247 

" III. Genesis of Modern Science 254 

" IV. Modern Art 270 

" V. Social Evolution since the Reformation. 283 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 
I. Hume's Problem 

All thinking is a relating of cause and effect. 
For that proposition I hope to- present many proofs. 
Against it I have been able in thirty years of search 
to find but one objection. That objection is that 
there are different kinds of causes so diverse that 
nothing can be predicated of them in common. For 
example Bradley in his Logic concedes that the proof 
of such a thesis would be "a very short cut to a far- 
lying goal." But he declares such proof to be im- 
possible; and his reason is that the word "cause" 
has many meanings and that in trying to penetrate 
its ambiguities we are liable tO' be "lost in the rnist 
of metaphysics." 

Cause and Reason. Bradley confines himself to 
emphasizing the difference between cause and reason. 
To this he devotes an entire chapter ; but the gist of 
his argument is given in a single one of three illus- 
trations which he uses. "Two coins," he says, "are 
proved to have similar inscriptions because they each 
are like to a third; but the cause is not found in 
this interrelation. The cause is the origin from a 
common die." Could anything be sillier than that? 

17 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

Here are two different effects ; on the one hand, two 
similar inscriptions ; on the other, our knowledge of 
their similarity. Certainly the two results are not 
produced by the same cause — to wit, the common 
die. But how does that prove any antithesis be- 
tween a cause and a reason? 

The other two illustrations are of the same kind, 
but even more fantastic. In fact the entire chapter 
is little more than a repetition of the argument just 
given. 

Hume's Problem. Other writers, however, have 
raised other objections, as for instance the contrast 
between immanent and transeunt causes. But these 
matters will be considered in the course of our posi- 
tive argument. Here it is needful only to face the 
supreme difficulty — Hume's celebrated problem 
which, according to Hoffding, "even Kant failed 
to solve and which indeed is insoluble." But that 
problem is instantly solved the moment that I prove 
that the idea of causality is logically involved in 
every process of thought, in every act of perceiving, 
conceiving, judgment or inference. Hume claimed 
that causation meant nothing but the uniform suc- 
cession of phenomena in space and time. But I shall 
prove that each word in the substituted phrase^ — 
uniformity, succession, things or phenomena, time 
or space — has involved within it the idea of caus- 
alit}'-. The relations severally indicated by these 
words rest primarily upon causal relations; and 
when the latter are cancelled these words lose all 
their meaning. Each word in his substituted phrase 

i8 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 

is made intelligible only by the idea of causality 
implicit within it. Thus in the very act of denying 
causation, Hume is really affirming it over and over 
again. 

But from these preliminaries we pass on to our 
real task, the proof that all relations known to 
thought are at bottom causal relations. 

II. Mathematical Relations 

There is,- however, a less absurd argument for 
distinguishing between cause and reason than the 
one already noticed in the first section. It is that 
cause refers only to changes or events, while ground 
or reason has a wider reference — for example, to 
mathematical truths which are not changes in time, 
but are im.mutable and eternal. 

I answer that the results of all mathematical 
processes are mental; and that therefore they are 
the most evanescent and changeful of all results. 
All arithmetic, for instance, is so many abbreviated 
processes of counting, and counting is but the ab- 
stracting of a mental unit from each of several 
objects. But the mental unit exists only for the 
instant in which it is being abstracted. The next 
instant I may repeat the abstracting act, but then 
a new unit — a new mental result is produced. In 
fine, nothing is so unstable, so fugacious as thought. 

But what then is immutable in arithmetic? I 
answer: the process of production — the method of 
counting or calculating. That never changes. And 

19 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

therefore the mental results attained will always be 
similar. 

It is the same in geometry. Space, as I hope 
soon to prove, is real. But the straight lines, curves, 
triangles, etc., which the imagination constructs in 
space are not real; they are as fleeting and volatile 
as all other mental results. It is only the cause, the 
process of production, the method of construction 
that never changes. 

The trouble with our modern thinkers is that they 
are still enmeshed in the crudities of a pre-scientific 
philosophy. As is well known, the savage does not 
distinguish between true numbers and what are 
called material numbers — that is between the abstract 
unit and the object from which it has been abstracted. 
There are good reasons, too, as we shall show here- 
after, for believing that the Greeks were not wholly 
exempt from this error. Rid yourself of this error, 
and you will instantly see that mathematical abstrac- 
tions are purely mental results or events, and there- 
fore are as properly ascribed to causes as motions 
are. 

The argument then for any essential distinction 
between cause and ground is the mere survival of 
an archaic error. 

III. Relations of Resemblance 

Our mental life probably begins with the noting 
of resemblances. At least it is a process which the 
brutes can perform as well as man and often better. 

20 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 

Witness, for instance, a dog scenting the footprints 
of his prey. 

But that this mere noting of resemblance is not 
real thinking is evident at a glance. For the mo- 
ment we try to express it in clear, exact propositions 
or judgments, it shows itself as incurably vague, 
incoherent and even self-contradictory. For, we can 
affirm of anything that it is like anything else in the 
universe, and we can affirm with equal truth that 
it is not like that other thing. 

How now can this vagueness and self-contradic- 
tion be transformed into real thinking ? Simply by 
showing that upon which the relation of resemblance 
depends. Thus two yellow objects are made like 
by the process O'f light, by the action of the aether 
waves ; at the same time they are made unlike by 
other causes. In fine, the moment we reach down 
to the causal relation underlying the likeness or 
difference, we begin tO' think. 

All that seems plain and simple enough. And 
yet the neglect of it has brought chaos into modern 
speculation. For example, the writer already quoted 
has sent forth another famous volume, the keynote 
of which is as follows : "A. relational way of think- 
ing — any one that moves by the machinery of terms 
and relations, must give appearance and not truth." 
But scrutinize his argument for this amazing propo- 
sition and you discover that, like all Hegelizers, he 
is occupied solely with relations of likeness and dif- 
ference. And confined within that sphere his para- 
dox is but a truism. All relations of resemblance 

21 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

are delusive and self-coEtradictory unless we point 
out that upon which the resemblance depends — in 
other words, unless they are transformed intO' causal 
relations. 

But writers who are occupied solely with likeness, 
and difference and their "identity," fail to see that 
they are dealing only with inchoate relations which 
are vaguely felt rather than distinctly thought. So 
they announce to an astonished world that "rela- 
tional modes of thought give appearance and not 
truth." 

IV. Substance and Attribute 

There is a look upon the very surface of things 
which bids us regard the relation of substance and 
attribute as a causal relation. Herbart has expressed 
it in his well-known formula : "Without causality no 
substantiality." Sigwart and many other logicians 
coincide.^ Nevertheless this view must be carefully 
qualified, or else it will lead far away from the truth. 

For the thing is not the cause, but only a cause 
of its attributes. Or abandoning old and misleading 
usages of speech, let us say that the thing is a factor 
in each and all of the processes of causation through 
which its attributes are severally produced. Modern 
science has shown that effects are not simple — as 
used to be imagined — but wonderfully complex. 
The color of a thing, for instance, is dependent not 
solely upon the thing, but is the resultant of an 
inconceivably complex process of causation wherein 
the thing is but a single factor. 

22 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 

This statement of the relation between the sub- 
stance and its attributes is so simple as to seem 
trivial. But it throws a flood of light upon some of 
the chief obscurations in modern philosophy. One 
or two of these obscurations must be noted. 

Inherence. Nothing has darkened philosophy 
quite so much as the very old but still surviving 
idea of attributes as inhering in or supported by the 
substance. The absurdity of this view is Berkeley's 
chief and most plausible argument for his system ; 
and plainly 'it is absurd- — this view of attributes in- 
hering in the substance, sticking in it like pins in 
a pin-cushion. It is but a metaphor, and a very 
bad one. 

Is it any wonder that this merely metaphorical 
relation explains nothing, breeds only confusion and 
darkness, and leads straight to Berkeley's illusion- 
ism? And the German philosophy, it seems to me, 
is little more than a revamping of Berkeley's with 
Berkeley's God eliminated. 

But substitute for this idle metaphorical relation 
a true causal one between substance and attribute. 
Each attribute of the thing — a stone for example — 
is then seen to be an effect, a product of a special 
process of causation. Its color is the product of an 
optical process ; its texture, of a crystallizing process ; 
its shape and size, perhaps, of a glacial process ; and 
so on through all its attributes. But the stone itself, 
the substance, is a factor in each and all of these 
varied processes. Thus all perplexities disappear. 
That one substance should have many attributes, 

23 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

instead of being a contradiction, as Hegel and Her- 
bart imagined, is an absolute necessity. For only 
through the presence of the thing as a persistent 
factor in different processes are we able to distin- 
guish it from its attributes. 

But we need not here pursue farther this line of 
thought — inviting as it is. For probably no one in 
these days will be rash enough to deny that the only 
true, completely intelligible relation between sub- 
stance and attribute is a causal relation. And that 
is enough for our present purpose, which is to prove 
that all thinking is essentially a relating of cause 
and effect. 

V. Space 

I define space as an indispensable factor in all 
processes of physical causation. Does some one 
object that space does nothing, neither produces nor 
resists motion, and therefore cannot be causal ? But 
Berkeley argued against the causality of things on 
precisely the same ground ; things, he said, are inert 
and therefore cannot be causes. Nevertheless the 
world now accepts it as an established fact that the 
existence of the earth is an indispensable factor in 
the causal process by which the fall of a stone — for 
example — is made possible. And it is an equally 
indisputable fact that space is an indispensable factor 
in the processes by which not only all motions, but 
all things are made possible. 

But how now do the friends of the pre-scientific 
philosophy, which still survives among us, manage 

24 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 

to annul these palpable facts ? Simply by dissecting 
the causal process and then showing that each of 
the dead members thereof, by itself, can accomplish 
nothing. First, it is shown that space is inert, is 
not a thing arid must therefore be nothing, or non- 
existent. Second, space being proved non-existent, 
it becomes a very easy task to show that things and 
motions are impossible. And so heaven and earth 
are made to vanish, as by the stroke of a conjurer's 
wand." 

But th'e days of this logical legerdemain will be 
over as soon as theorists begin to comprehend causa- 
tion as modern science reveals it. Blvery effect, even 
the minutest, is the product of a very complex process 
with many factors of different kinds. No one of 
these — space, time, thing or motion — can by itself 
be a cause, for the simple reason that a cause requires 
them all. 

Subjectivism. The so-called "idealism" is at 
present so' evidently in a state of disintegration that 
to oppose it seems very much like an attack upon 
the dead or the dying. Still it is necessary to present 
here what appears to me conclusive proof that it is 
literally impossible to think of space as non-existent. 
That proof can be given in a few words, as follows : 

We know our sensations, we discriminate one of 
them from another not through an}^ attributes of 
their own, but only through attributes of spatial 
objects perceived. 

The sensation produced by a round object is not 
itself spherical. The sensation of a mountain is no 

25 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

taller than the sensation produced by an ant hill. 
The sensation of a red object is not itself painted 
red. In fine, perceptive states have no discernible 
attributes of their own; we discriminate between 
them only through the spatial attributes of the ob- 
jects perceived. Therefore, when we cancel the 
spatial attributes of objects as rmreal we annihilate 
every possible means of distinguishing one percep- 
tive state from another ; and since the other processes 
of thought — memory, imagination, conception — de- 
pend ultimately upon perceptions, we thus annihilate 
all thinking and all knowledge.^ The whole fabric 
of thought instantly collapses. 

Does some one insist that the spatial world is not 
really cancelled, but recognized as only existing 
phenomenally, as a universal dream, as ideas out- 
wardly projected? I answer that your world as 
mental cannot possibly have spatial attributes, and 
that nothing can be known by ascribing to it attrib- 
utes which it does not possess. And so idealism is 
not at all saved. 

But while thus showing the idealistic theory to 
be impossible, let us do all honor to its high aim. 
That aim was to guarantee those primary convic- 
tions upon which the morality and religion of man- 
kind repose. But such a guarantee cannot be gained 
in that way. That is abundantly proved by the his- 
tory of the Maya doctrine in India and of Kantian 
illusionism in the nineteenth century. Indeed, 
morality and religion would perish utterly if man- 
kind believed that they could be defended only by 

26 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 

accepting the paradoxes of idealism. But I hope 
to show in these pages that there is a better way. 

In concluding it hardly needs to be added that 
what has here been proved concerning space, applies 
equally well to time. Both are indispensable factors 
in all processes of physical causation. 

VI. Concepts 

Almost every one now recognizes the futility of 
the old dispute between the Nominalist and the Con- 
ceptualist. Wasting no time upon dead issues, then, 
I seek to show that the primary and essential import 
of every concept is to indicate a causal process. 

Note now that if all concepts can be proved to 
have this causal meaning, it would be enough by 
itself — even without reference to what has been said 
in previous pages — to thoroughly establish my thesis 
that all thinking is a relating of cause and effect; 
for no act of thinking is possible save through the 
medium of concepts. To' find this required proof 
let us first consult the science of language. 

The origin of concepts. It is now a well-estab- 
lished principle in linguistic science that the majority 
of verbal roots express acts, and mostly acts which 
men in a primitive state of society are called upon 
to perform — such as digging, plaiting, weaving, 
striking, throwing, binding, etc.* Furthermore, they 
are generally acts performed in common; for only 
thus could they become intelligible to the entire com- 
munity, and only thus could the merely accidental 

27 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

elements be eliminated. And most important of all, 
we are told that the mere consciousness of the acts 
of digging-, binding, etc., is not enough; only when 
the processes are such that their results remain per- 
ceptible — for example, in the hole dug, in the tree 
struck down, in the reeds tied together as a mat — 
do men reach conceptual thought in language.^ 

Could there be any clearer proof than this that 
concepts spring from the recognition of processes 
of causation ? Or, as Prof. Noire has expressed it : 
"The conception of causality subsisting between 
things. Verily ! this constitutes such a simple, plain 
and at the same time obvious and convincing means 
of distinguishing the Logos, human reason from, 
animal intelligence, that it seems inconceivable that 
this manifest and clear boundary line should not 
long ago have been noted and established as such." ® 

The classifying process. We turn now from this 
unimpeachable proof presented by the origins of lan- 
guage to evidence of another kind, later, but equally 
conclusive. It is the testimony offered by man's 
protracted effort to rightly classify natural things. 
But, first of all, we must get rid of the ancient super- 
stition that true classifying consists merely in noting 
the similarities or resemblances of objects. Logi- 
cians and philosophers still cling- to that idea with 
a sad tenacity; and yet a slight inspection of scien- 
tific methods ought to have taught them better. But 
we have proved, as the reader will remember, that 
a mere relation of resemblance, in and by itself, is 

28 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 

vague, misleading and even self-contradictor}^ This 
principle we wish now tO' apply to the history of the 
classifying process. 

We find that at a quite early period men, even the 
half civilized and the savage, had succeeded fairly 
well in classifying living things so far as they were 
known, into their species or lowest kinds. The 
reason of their success is evident. They had con- 
stantly before their eyes the process of production 
upon which the resemblances depended, and hence 
it was not difficult tO' reduce the confused mass of 
specific and non-specific characteristics to an orderly 
arrangement. 

But concerning inorganic things there was no 
such knowledge; their processes of production were 
hidden in a darkness which the most enlightened 
could not penetrate. Hence we find that every effort 
to classify these inorganic things ended in complete 
and even comical failure. So grand a genius as that 
of Aristotle could invent no better scheme for ar- 
ranging inanimate things than under four such heads 
as "the hot and dry," "the hot and wet," "the cold 
and dry" and "the cold and wet." 

Note furthermore that ancient classification even 
of living things was confined exclusively to species. 
For thousands of years learned men — Theophrastus, 
for instance, whom Aristotle selected to be his suc- 
cessor — had been studying botany; and yet until 
three centuries ago they had not advanced beyond 
the absurd division of the plant-world into "trees, 

29 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

shrubs and herbs." But light dawned at last when 
Gessner discovered that true genera could be formed 
"by noting characteristics drawn from the process 
of fructiUcatioii." Since then naturalists, in their 
long search for a true or natural system of classifi- 
cation — as Darwin expressly affirms — "have always 
been unconsciously guided not by mere resemblance, 
but by the principle of inheritance." '' And principle 
of inheritance is plainly but another phrase for 
process of production. 

And under the guidance of this same principle 
Darwin himself was led to that sublime discovery 
which has revolutionized modern thought. 

Why, then, should logic remain eternally myopic. 
seeing only the rough, blurred resemblances, blind 
to that upon which they depend ? Hegel indeed had 
a certain glimpse of the truth ; the concept holds in 
its very essence, as he said, the necessity of a devel- 
opment. But he could explain this fact only by the 
preposterous principle that contradictories were 
identical. Logic, however, does not need to commit 
suicide ; it needs only to remember that a concept or 
kind must be understood as pointing not merely to 
a bunch of similarities but to the process of produc- 
tion upon which the similarities depend. Thus we 
surmount the seeming contradiction between the 
Darwinian view of the concept as in a continuous 
state of transition and the old Platonic view of the 
concept as abiding and changeless. The character- 
istics even in their variation are the necessary results 

30 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 

of a process of production that never changes. Just 
as the infinitely varying motion of a faUing stone is 
the resultant of the invariable process of gravitation. 

Abstraction. Another line of evidence is opened 
by considering that ignoble prejudice against "the 
abstract" which Hegel and his pupils have done so 
much to foster. The master indeed was an adept in 
ambiguities, but the pupils speak out boldly. Thus 
Bradley, for example, sends forth a book of five 
hundred pages crammed with destructive criticism 
hinging mainly upon the singular claim that to con- 
ceive is to "mutilate." We are there taught that 
"all analytic judgments are false." Why? Because 
in judging we must abstract, and in abstracting 
"we have separated, divided, abridged, dissected, we 
have mutilated the given." 

But surely all that is mere foolishness. In ab- 
stracting, say the red color of an apple, you do not 
divide or dissect anything; you simply fix your at- 
tention, focalize your thought upon a particular 
aspect presented by the apple. You do not destroy, 
as Bradley asserts you do, "that vital interconnection 
of things which is their life." On the contrary, you 
enlarge and illumine that interconnection. You still 
consider — if you are sane — the color as inseparably 
connected with the apple, but also as connected with 
other factors in the vast process of causation that 
has produced the color — with the sun, the aether 
waves, the wondrous mechanism of nerve and brain. 
All these amplifying, illumining functions of the 

31 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

abstracting act, fimctions opening up such endless 
vistas to man and lifting him into communion with 
the Infinite, all these Bradley overlooks in his un- 
founded fear that thought may be "mutilated." 
Does not such a criticism as his furnish another 
proof of my thesis? Does it not prove that when 
you fail to understand the concept as indicating 
causal process you make it very easy to maintain 
and very difficult to disprove that thought is any- 
thing more than error and vain deceit? 

The Meaning of the Copula. And here we are 
introduced to still another theme that has long been 
enveloped in hopeless controversy and paradox by 
the failure of logicians to reach the deepest and 
only true meaning of the concept. Even the sober- 
minded Sigwart ends his rather prolix researches 
into the matter with the half-despairing question : 
"But how does it happen that the verb to be which 
is the expression of actual existence assumes a for- 
mal function in the copula whereby it loses its mean- 
ing — nay even seems to contradict it." ^ 

My answer to that question is that in the copula 
to be neither loses nor contradicts, but rather reveals 
its true and deepest meaning. For all seem now tO' 
agree that being is known to us only as behavior,^ 
what it does or suffers. In other words, to exist is 
to be in causal connection with other existents. And 
that is precisely its meaning in the copula; it asserts 
a causal connection between the subject and the 
predicate. 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 

The copula as thus interpreted is wondrously 
adapted to express the pecuHar relation between 
subject and predicate. For, as we have shown in 
the section treating of Substance and Attribute, the 
subject is not the cause of its predicate, but merely 
a factor in the causal process producing the predi- 
cate. 

What adds to the cogency of this interpretation 
is that really there is no other. If you reject this 
you must either accept the Hegelian view that the 
subject is identical with the predicate, and that is 
absurd on its face. Or else you must accept the 
ordinary view which does not even pretend to ex- 
plain the copula. 

Thus we complete our summary of the proof — 
many different lines of evidence starting- from many 
different sources and all converging upon the com- 
mon conclusion — that a concept essentially means 
not a bundle of resemblances, but a process of causa- 
tion. 

VII. The Infinite Cause 

The demonstration of our fundamental principle 
seems then to be complete. We have scrutinized 
every kind of relations known to human thought — 
those of mere resemblance, those of substance and 
quality, spatial and temporal relations, mathematical 
relations, classificatory ones, and finally all these 
aggregated together under the all-embracing term, 
concepts or universals — and underlying each of them 

33 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

we have found a causal relation. We have proved 
also that when the latter is cancelled all these rela- 
tions become meaningless and unintelligible. There- 
fore the denial of causality logically involves the 
complete collapse and extinction of all thinking. 
That is our solution of Hume's problem. 

But there is a corollary to the above demonstration 
which must not be forgotten. The only true and 
/complete cause as distinguished from results or 
effects must be an Infinite Cause acting self-sacrific- 
ingly for the sake of others. 

For finite things, as we have seen, are effects ; in 
common speech we call them causes, but really they 
are only factors in processes of causation. And, on 
the other hand, since the Infinite has need of noth- 
ing. His creative activity could only be for the sake 
of others. 

Furthermore, under this view there is no con- 
trariety between the relative independence of the 
created and the infinitude of the Creator. For vol- 
untary self-limitation for the sake of others does 
not impair infinitude, but rather reveals it at the 
summit of its glory. 

I claim no originality for this view of an infinite 
self-sacrificing Cause. On the contrary, this view 
has always been present more or less dimly in men's 
souls. All the sacrificial elements of religion are 
but distorted — often hideously caricatured expres- 
sions of this primary truth. Especially in studying 
the civilization of the Hindus we shall see how 
potent this view was among them, how their thinkers 

34 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 

debated it for centuries almost precisely on the lines 
indicated above, and how finally they went astray 
under the influence of their doctrine of Maya or 
illusionism. 

All that I can claim is to have restored what has 
always lain dim and mutilated in human conscious- 
ness — to have exhibited it as an evident corollary 
from the demonstration of causality given in the 
preceding pages. 

VIII. Tzvo Types of Civilisation 

All thinking then is a relating of cause and effect. 
From this insight we may derive a fundamental law 
of human development which is not a mere hypoth- 
esis or conjecture, but a plain deduction from the 
very nature of thought. For human life, being finite 
and imperfect, finds it very difficult to hold these 
two factors of thought in their proper equipoise. 
Hence two tendencies arise each of which develops 
one of the two factors at the expense of the other. 
The one tendency emphasizes causality or depend- 
ence, the other lays an equally one-sided emphasis 
upon effects, is engrossed with visible, practical re- 
sults. Thus each tends to ignore what the other 
exaggerates. In each case, as we shall see, the 
dominant tendency will work itself out in all the 
v^aried spheres of life and thought — in religion, 
morality, science, art and the social organization. 
Thus two contrasted types of civilization divergent 
at almost every point will be created. 

35 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

This principle of the two tendencies, I hope to 
show, is the key to the philosophy of history. 

NOTES 

^ Sigwart, Logic, II. 91. "The concept of the thing when once it is 
removed from its popular vagueness cannot be completed without 
that of cause." 

" Bowne, Metaphysics, 129 seq., may be instanced as a notable example 
of this kind of argumentation. 

^ Adamson (Development of Modern Philosophy, I. p. 3S8) says: "The 
point of my argument that only through the character of that which 
is apprehended and referred to the trans-subjective, does the subjec- 
tive, the inr;er life of the finite self receive definiteness of meaning." 
But the first publication of my view antedates his by many years. 

* Muller, Lectures on the Science of Thought, 30. 
^ Ibid. 3 1 . 

* Noire, Origin of Language, 47. 

"^ Darv;in, Origin of Species, Chap. XIV. 

* Sigwart, Logic, Vol. I., p. 100. 

^ Baldwin, Mental Development, 271. "The thing is behavior.'' See also 
Schiller, Humanism, 209. 



36 



BOOK I 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA 



CHAPTER I 

The Religion of India 

I. Analysis of Tendencies 

In this and the succeeding book we seek to give 
a philosophic view of the contrasted civilizations of 
India and classical antiquity as unfolding from the 
two opposed tendencies outlined at the close of the 
preceding chapter. On the one side is Indian civil- 
ization genetically due to the unchecked develop- 
ment of the tendency to emphasize causality or de- 
pendence; on the other, classical civilization as an 
equally one-sided development of the tendency that 
is intent upon mere results. 

But an objection may arise at the start. If all 
thinking is causal, must it not always emphasize 
causality? But it is now generally recognized that 
all thinking contains an element of willing, and 
vice versa; the old theory of separate faculties is 
abandoned. Under this view it is evident that 
thought may become preponderantly passive and 
contemplative, or else active, practical, intent upon 
results. It may be retrospective, reverent towards 
the past, submissive to authority; or else it may be 

39 



TPIE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

prospective, eager for novelty and progress. Above 
all, it may see in causes only means tO' its 
special ends, and so despising wide and vague gen- 
eralizations seek for that exactitude so needful for 
successful adapting of means to an end. Or again 
the main trend of thought may be explanatory ; or 
it may be predictive. So each of the tvv^o great ten- 
dencies branches into its special divisions, and each 
of these divisions has its various degrees of in- 
tensity. It is upon this multiplicity of tests that we 
rely to give our study a true inductive character. 

From these preliminary views we turn now to 
our survey of Indian civilization, beginning with the 
characteristics of its religion. 

II. Sacrificialism 

The sacrificial idea, in some shape or other, per- 
vades all religions, but in none of them is it devel- 
oped with such fullness and startling mysticism as 
in early Hinduism. Sacrifice among the Greeks and 
Romans was merely a commercial transaction ; you 
give food to the hungry gods and get something in 
return. But the Hindus rose above this sordid view 
to heights where the Western imagination has hardly 
been able to follow them. wSacrifice to them was 
not barter, but self-immolation. As such it was the 
first principle of morals; nay, more, it was the 
primary condition upon which the cosmic order de- 
pended. If there were no sacred offerings, the suc- 
cession of days and nights, the course of the seasons, 

40 



THE RELIGION OF INDIA 

the steadfastness of the firmament would cease. 
"Cast into the fire," say the Laws of Manu/ "the 
offering goes into the sun, from the sun rain is 
produced, from the rain nourishment, from the 
latter all creatures are produced." 

Furthermore, these sacrifices on earth were but a 
mere copy of those offered in heaven. In the un- 
seen world the gods performed the sacred rites 
which the Brahmans, to the best of their ability, 
imitated in this world. "So," according to one 
famous Vedic hymn,^ "the gods through sacrifice 
earned a right to sacrifice; these were the first 
ordinances." 

But in this Vedic apotheosis of sacrifice, as it has 
been aptly called,^ there was a still more funda- 
mental thought. In the beginning of time, the 
Supreme Being created all things by the sacrifice 
of himself. Thus dimly the Vedas have preserved 
the view of creation as an act of self-sacrifice on the 
part of the Creator. That it is a survival of a 
more primitive tradition is shown by a host of facts. 
For instance, a similar account of creation as a 
Divine Sacrifice is given in the Scandinavian Edda.* 
And the Zendavesta speaks of Ahura-Mazda as 
offering sacrifices to the lower divinities whom he 
had created. 

Some may dismiss all this intense sacrificialism 
of Vedic religion as "preposterous ;" ^ or call it, with 
Oldenberg, "empty mummery, a disease of Vedic 
poetry." ^ But the business of the philosophy of 
history is neither to sneer nor to revile, but simply 

41 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

to understand. And I do not see how any one can 
explain these utterances except as dim glimpses or 
forecasts of that one great truth upon which all 
religion rests. That truth, as was shown near the 
close of the preceding chapter, is simply this : in- 
finite causation presupposes and cannot be made 
intelligible except as self-sacrifice or as effort for 
the sake of others. 

But this conception of the Infinite as self-sacri- 
ficing was by no means an "intuition," an instinct 
of thought, obvious and irresistible. On the con- 
trary, it was a difficult deduction made evident only 
by keen analysis and open to many objections. This 
accounts for its unfrequent appearance in Vedic 
poetry and its gradual obscuration behind the wild, 
grotesque fancies of Hindu mythology. What took 
its place we have next to describe. 

III. Pantheism 

The idea of the Infinite as self-sacrificing, we 
have seen, was not easy to grasp and difficult to 
hold. And its vanishing from Hindu thoiight was 
made inevitable by the steady advance of pessimism ; 
little by little the faint, primitive faith in the Infinite 
as self-sacrificing Love evaporated before an ever- 
growing sense of the ills and misery of life. But 
this explanation only throws us back to another oft- 
asked question: Why did pessimism thus sweep like 
a flood over India ? The answer returned by Olden- 
berg" and many others — that it was due to the 

42 



THE RELIGION OF INDIA 

enen^ating influences of a tropical climate — does not 
seem to me altogether satisfactory. Climate may 
have been a contributory cause, but a deeper reason 
lay in the very nature of the Hindu emphasis upon 
causes and ignoring of results. For the best cure 
for pessimism is a life of action, a habit of 
looking eagerly forward towards results yet to 
be attained.^ And all this was lacking in the Hindu 
sage, a hermit retrospective, perplexed, weighed 
down by a sense of dependence upon infinite mys- 
teries. 

But whatever may be the explanation, no one 
denies the fact that India, after the Vedic age, 
grew more and more saturated with pessimism. 
And so it happened that the skeptical Sankhya phil- 
osophy could sum up the argument denying all 
creation in three brief sentences, as follows : "To 
create a world like this would be unjust and cruel; 
Every intelligent being acts from self-interest or 
beneficence; A creator zvho has all he can desire 
has no interest in creating anything." ^ 

And to that Sankara the most famous teacher 
of Vedanta orthodoxy can answer only that "the 
series of creations has had no beginning." In other 
words, both the skeptical and the orthodox schools 
cancel any real creation. They meet upon the com- 
mon ground of Pantheism. 

lUusionism. But in this acceptance of Pantheism, 
Hindu thought by no means surrenders that extreme 
emphasis upon causality which formed its very soul. 
It saved itself from this by inventing that extra- 

43 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

ordinary doctrine of Maya, or illusion, which car- 
ried from India to Greece and thence handed down 
to modern times has exercised such an immense 
influence upon the human mind. By their panthe- 
istic denial of any creation or beginning of things 
these Indian sages seemed to extirpate the very idea 
of causality, but suddenly they restore it in a new 
and wondrous form. There is no more a hint oi 
"secondary" or intermediate causes or of things and 
persons. All was Maya. The Absolute One alone 
existed, and maintained that endless succession of 
curiously interwoven dreams that we call the uni- 
verse. 

The Maya doctrine was of comparatively late 
origin in Indian antiquity. At least Deussen's 
proofs of its existence in the Rig Veda do not seem 
to me convincing. But it was finally developed 
with a logical rigor that make our Occidental imi- 
tations look somewhat pale and thin. Indeed the 
average academic "idealist" of to-day is apt to be 
astonished when he finds that the idealistic argu- 
ments now most used were scornfully refuted and 
set aside as "absurd" more than a thousand years 
ago by Sankara, the great master of Hindu ideal- 
ism." But the explanation is easy. Hindu idealism 
was logical and uncompromising; for it the outer 
world was just as real as the minds that perceive 
them. As the Oriental sense of dependence had 
developed more and more, it had finally surrendered 
not only things, but personality, thought, will and 
feeling as nothing but a dream.^^ Compared with 

44 



THE RELIGION OF INDIA 

the incisive vigor and thoroughness of this old 
Hindu logic our modern idealism is a decided de- 
generation. 

IV. Metempsychosis 

But the most peculiar and the most potent factor 
in Indian religion is its doctrine of re-incarnation. 
It is absolutely unique, known in no other land save 
as an echo from Indian shores. But in Hindu 
thought after a certain date it was an axiom. Not 
even skepticism, so long as it pretended tO' be intelli- 
gent, could discard it. The atheistic Sankhya 
philosophy does not dream of doubting re-incarna- 
tion; on the contrary it claims as the special merit 
of its doctrine that it "delivers the soul from the 
misery of the endless flow of existence and abolishes 
the necessity of being born again." ^" All the rival, 
schools make the same boast, each for itself. And 
even Buddha, who doubted everything else, made 
this doctrine the very pivot of his system, although 
upon its very face it is absolutely irreconcilable with 
his other convictions.^^ 

The universal acceptance of this doctrine by the 
Hindus and the overwhelming importance it assumed 
have never been explained. But it can now readily 
be explained as an inevitable outcome of that exces- 
sive, one-sided emphasis upon causality which forms 
the essence of Indian civilisation. To make that 
more evident, let us look analytically at some of the 
main features of the doctrine. 

Note first its ethical import; its intense insistence 
45 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

upon the moral order of the world. As has been 
well said, " its attractiveness for the Asiatic consists 
in the fact that it solves that endless puzzle which 
European thought has given up in despair, viz., the 
apparently unjust government of the world by a just 
God."" All pains, deformities and troubles are 
conceived as causally connected with sins committed 
in a pre-existent state. 

A second notable feature of the doctrine is its in- 
sistence upon the close causal connection or inter- 
dependence subsisting between all forms of being. 
"To draw any line of distinction between stocks, 
stones, plants, animals, m.an or the gods," says Sir 
Monier Williams,^^ "is according to the theor)^ of 
Brahminism impossible." And in that we have a 
vivid picture of what Oldenberg rightly calls the 
utter "resultlessness" of the Hindu conception of 
life.^*^ The individual passes on through an endless 
series of mutations — from an insect to a god, and 
then back again, perhaps — nowhere is there finality, 
any definite result or purpose to be attained. Can 
anyone conceive of a more perfect portrayal of what 
1 have described as the essence of the Hindu spirit — 
exaggerated emphasis upon causality and a cor- 
responding neglect of results? 

Again the cosmological significance of the doctrine 
is great. Brahma, the Absolute One, is the cause of 
the unity, the order, vastness and beauty of the uni- 
verse, but all its disorder, evanescence and evil 
originate in the enchainment of Karma. Or, as 
Sankara puts it : "The world is a world of inequali- 

46 



THE RELIGION OF INDIA 

ties because of the various works that liave to be 
recompensed to the migrating souls." 

Finally the doctrine, like that of Maya, was of 
slow growth. Its incipient stages can be discerned 
in the Brahmana.^® And note, furthermore, that 
when this conception of Karma first appears it does 
not come clothed in the gloom and despair it after- 
wards assumed; what later on was abhorred and 
dreaded "vvas in the Brahmanas welcomed as a bless- 
ing! ^^ But gradually the sky darkened. The 
Hindu mind retrospective, contemplative, seeking 
eagerly for causes, sought tO' explain the facts of 
life. But with every attempt at explanation the 
mysteries and contradictions seemed to multiply, the 
problem of evil grew more hopeless, and so finally — 
about the time of Buddha probably — the dogma of 
re-birth put on the hideous form it ever since has 
worn — a doom of despair, a curse pronounced upon 
the human race. And thus for the Hindu, salvation 
came to mean to be rescued from existence. 

V. Faith 

A boundless faith is another marked character- 
istic of religion among the Hindus. Blindly, eagerly, 
they bowed before the authority of their ancient 
writers; each line in the holy Vedas was infallible, 
each word and letter invested with a peculiar sanctity. 
There wag no legend too childish, no magic too 
absurd or base not to be accepted. All these matters 
are well-known; and equally evident is their origin 

47 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

in a spirit retrospective, engrossed with the convic- 
tion of dependence. 

Skepticism. But the question of faith is beset with 
many difficuhies which have never yet been removed. 
Much Hght it is hoped will be thrown upon them in 
the progress of this survey of civilisation; but for 
the present it is enough to point two special features 
of Hindu faith, and first its inexactitude. At the 
outset of this chapter we described exactitude as 
springing out of the counter-impulse to that of India, 
out of intense effort to adapt means to definite ends 
or results. Therefore Hindu thought, engrossed 
with causes, little intent upon results has always 
ladced exactness. Especially, its boundless faith has 
been something like a great river without banks, so 
broad and diffusive that it loses itself in the sands. 
This accounts for that anomaly which every one 
notes in Buddhism, its strange blending of blind 
faith with the most sweeping skepticism. The same 
anomaly is equally prominent in the orthodox Upan- 
ishads and in all the rival systems of India's philoso- 
phy. And we shall also find this insight illumining 
much in the development of its art, science and 
morality. 

Hopelessness. When the Greeks first became ac- 
quainted with the Hindus, nothing amazed them 
more than the fixed, full assurance of India's faith 
in immortality. -° It was in complete contrast with 
their own attitude of doubt and wavering concerning 
the hereafter. 

Nevertheless the Hindu belief in its final develop- 
48 



THE RELIGION OF INDIA 

ment was devoid of one element essential to all 
genuine faith. It gave no gladness and kindled no 
enthusiasm ; rather, it filled the soul with gloom. It 
was not so in the earliest Vedic age. Then faith was 
still simple and primitive. Death is pictured as a 
passing "across the great mountains to a home which 
cannot be taken from us — where every wish is 
granted in the highest heaven." '-^^ The prayer of 
men was : "Where there is eternal light — where life 
is free there make me immortal." "^ 

Eut as the centuries rolled by and India became 
more and more engrossed with the thought of de- 
pendence and fatalistic speculations, this primitive 
hopefulness slowly vanished; and, just as I have 
explained in the preceding section, the gloomy, 
despairing doctrine of re-incarnation took its place. 
So it happened that the very essence of Hindu re- 
ligion came to be faith without hope. 

NOTES 

1 Manu, Institutes, III. 76. 

~ Rig-Veda, X. 90. 16. 

s Brhaddevata, Vol. II., § 69. Harvard Oriental Series. "He (Praja- 

pati) having divided himself into three parts, etc." See also the 

Ptirushta Hymn in Rig Veda, X. 90. 

* Ragozin, Vedic India. 382; Menzies, Hist, of Religions, 68. 

s Williams, Brahinanism and Hindiiism, 44. "The most preposterous of 
all the ideas connected with the sacrificial act was that of making it 
the instrument of creation." 

* Oldenberg, Ancient India, 20, 

" Oldenberg, Buddha, p. 11. Hopkins, Religions of India, 313, disagrees 
with this. In another place he says that "politics and society had 
more to do with altering opinion than had temperature and miasma." 
There is truth in that, too. 

8 Gough, Philosophy of the Upanishads, 206-8. 

^ Ihid. Also Vedanta Sara XXVIII, where Ramanuja says that matter 

49 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

and sotjls — "the body of the Lord are to be looked upon as his 

effects; but they have had their individual existence irom all 

eternity." 
^^ Gough, Philosophy of the Upanishads, 192 seq. Note especially 

Sar.kara's argument about "the irradiation of ti;e perception by 

itself." 
^1 Vedanta Sara, V. 16. The individual is but "a projection of the 

Infinite Spirit as the image of a face is projected in a mirror." 
^2 Garbe, Ancient India, lo-ii. Also Deussen, Thilosophy of the 

Upar'jshads. 354-5. 
"^^ Rhys Davids {Buddhism, 165) wonders why Buddha retained this 

dogma, and hopes for a future answer. My answer is that Buddha 

was a Hindu. 
'•^ Townsend, Asia and Europe, 14. 
15 Brahmanism and Hinduism, 44. 
18 Buddha, 45. 

1'^ Gough, Philosophy of the Upanishads, 207. 
18 Muir, Ancient Sanskrit Texts, Vol. V., p. 314, seq. 
18 Cat. Br., I., 5, 3, 14, cf. Hopkins, Religions of India, 204. 

20 Megastbenes, Indica, ed. Scliwanbeck, 137. 

21 Rig- Veda, X. 14. 

" JWd, IX. 113. , . . , I 



50 



CHAPTER 11 

HINDU MORALITY 

I. The Basis of Ethics 

Our thesis is as clearly and fully verified in the 
ethics as in the religion of India. For the supreme 
problem of ethics is to show the cause or ground 
of moral obligation. Why ought we, without 
reference to our personal likes or dislikes, to do 
certain acts and to leave certain others undone? 
Over that question our own moralists are still in a 
quandary; their answers are conflicting, vague and 
unconvincing. But to it India early gave the answer 
that there was a Moral Order which ruled the 
universe, establishing moral laws and enforcing them 
with all the power of infinitude. To' that answer 
she has adhered with a wonderful tenacity for 
thousands of years. More and more her emphasis 
upon causality has focalized in this assurance of 
moral causation. 

Of course this faith in the Moral Order implies 
that virtue leads to desirable results ; a cause without 
any effects would be absurd. But note that the 
results are always conceived as secondary and 

SI 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

derivative. India did not try to deduce the moral 
order from any analysis of the good and evil for- 
tunes of men : if she had she would have landed in 
the same abyss of ethical bewilderment and skep- 
ticism that Greece did. On the contrary, India 
took directly the opposite course. She postulated 
the moral order and then invented the unique scheme 
of metemps3^chosis to justify her faith. 

Not even her pessimism disturbed this funda- 
mental assurance of Karma, the iron chain of moral 
causation. In that curiously subtile fashion which 
reached its climax in Buddha's system, Hindu 
thinkers managed to retain their faith in moral 
causation even while abhorring all its results. 

Finally, this belief in Karma was not merely 
primary but all-embracing, the pivot upon which all 
other thought turned. Hindu cosmology, for exam- 
ple, was based upon it. The world and all that 
lived therein were created in order that sins might 
be expiated and the moral order maintained. Souls, 
the Vedanta says, "demand for their atonement the 
repeated creation of the universe." ^ 

Sclf-SacriUce. But our verification goes still 
farther. It shows that India conceived results not 
merely as secondary and of minor importance, but 
that she was wholly blind to those results that were 
most significant and essential to morality. And thus 
we come to a very simple and sure explanation of 
what seems most inexplicable and monstrous in her 
life — her asceticism. 

For the gist of the moral order ordained by the 
52 



HINDU MORALITY 

Infinite is that man should be as much as possible like 
his Maker. He should strive to be self-sacrificing — 
subordinating his own private interests to the com- 
mon interests of all. But India, through her indif- 
ference to results, had lost the true meaning of self- 
sacrifice as effort for the sake of others — for the 
promotion of their interests and happiness. For this 
true self-sacrifice she had substituted the idea of self- 
torture. To refuse all the joys of existence, to live 
in anguish, to starve, maim and rack the body with 
every possible pain — this India deemed tO' be the 
ideal of existence ordained by the moral order of the 
world. That, beyond a doubt, was the deadliest of 
all the errors into which India fell. It was the 
fatal curse that wrecked her civilisation. 

Who will gainsay, I fearlessly ask, this explana- 
tion of Hindu morality? Who can reconcile in a 
clearer, simpler way features so antagonistic as the 
two here described? On the one side we have the 
emphasis upon causality creating the firmest faith 
in the moral order of the world — a faith which our 
modern life with all its culture and Christianity has 
not been able to retain. On the other side we have 
a corresponding indifference to results which has 
perverted and degraded this splendid faith into an 
insane demand for cruel, useless, life-long torture. 

Self-sacrifice thus degraded to self-torture evi- 
dently does not promote any real humanitarian 
impulse. Many recent writers have noted this lack 
of sympathy in Hindu life. Oldenberg, for example, 
speaks of "the cool air in which all Buddhistic moral- 

53 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

ity floats." ^ "Its motive power is not the groundless 
enigmatic, self-surrender of love, but rather intelli- 
gent reflection upon what is politic or profitable." ^ 
And Indian philosophy throughout is content with a 
recommendation not to active effort for the allevia- 
tion of human misery, but to remember that the pains 
and sorrows of life are nothing but dreams. A rapt 
admirer of that philosophy ecstatically exclaims : * 
"The Bible says, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,' but 
Veda says, 'Thy neighbor is thyself and what separ- 
ates you from him is mere illusion." " Imagine all 
the philanthropies of Christendom reduced tO' an 
endeavor to persuade the unhappy that neither they 
nor their troubles had any real existence ! 

Still we cannot say, with another recent writer,'^ 
"that Brahmanism contains no message of comfort 
for the sufferer, of love, forgiveness or humility." 
The Mahabharata commands us "to overcome the 
evil man with goodness" ; ^ and in another place sets 
forth as an example, "the tree that screens with its 
leaves the man who fells it." '^ And we know that 
at least in one Buddhistic kingdom, four hundred 
years before Christ, charitable institutions were 
numerous; rest houses for travellers were provided 
on the highways, and the capital possessed an ex- 
cellent free hospital endowed by benevolent citizens. 
And yet the impartial critic, while doing all honor 
to what is really good and noble in the Indian doc- 
trine of charity, must also recognize in it a grave, 
incurable defect. There is a taint of morbidness and 
of insincerity in an ethics which induced Buddha, 

54 



HINDU MORALITY 

SO we are told, to give his body to feed a hungry- 
tiger. It is a hideous perversion of moraUty M^hich 
makes the Jains so anxious lest they destroy or even 
disturb the vermin upon their bodies, which causes 
hosts of monkeys to be fed at the public expense 
while the men and children are left tO' starve, that 
counts it a deadly sin to step upon an insect and yet 
holds human life cheaper than dirt. Somehow the 
Hindu's ideal of self-sacrifice has served only tO' 
heighten his inhumanity. The want of the power of 
sympathy is the root of all evil in him.® 

But this seeming anomaly vanishes when we re- 
member that the fundamental law of Indian civiliza- 
tion is an ever growing exaggeration of causality. 
The Hindu weighed down by his fatalistic emphasis 
upon Karma, or the iron chain of causes, looks vvith 
despair upon every effort to^ mitigate the misery of 
mankind. And so it happens that his ideal of self- 
sacrifice is so apt to vaporize intO' an ascetic disci- 
pline and the veneration of vermin. 

II. The Practical Virtues 

There seems now to be almost complete agree- 
ment among moralists of every school that ethical 
laws like physical ones are made known only 
through observation of results. The older view that 
each moral precept has been directly revealed by 
some "innate idea" or "intuition" implanted in the 
human breast has broken down before the unanswer- 
able question : How then shall we account for that 

55 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

marked diversity of ethical judgments exhibited in 
different ages and among different peoples? 

Furthermore, even if we suppose a moral code 
intuitionally revealed, some means of interpreting it 
are still requisite. The Middle Ages and modern 
times, for example, although bowing before the same 
ethical code, differ much in moral sentiment, because 
each of the two periods has given a special promin- 
ence to a particular part of the code. And uni- 
versally the worst iniquities of mankind have come 
not from the willful transgression of some moral 
precept but from the unconscious obscuration of that 
precept through the over-shadowing importance at- 
tached to some other part of the ethical system. 
The only safeguard against such obliquities and dis- 
tortions is through the appeal to experience, the 
constant testing of human conduct by its bearing 
upon human welfare. In fine, right action is known 
definitely and thoroughly only through its social 
results. 

And here we have another signal proof of our 
law of Indian civilization — engrossment with causes 
and corresponding neglect of results. For, plainly, 
Hindu ethics was developed with very slight refer- 
ences to the practical consequences of conduct. 
There was a strange lack of ethical perspective. 
Trivial precepts assumed supreme importance; the 
most momentous ones from a practical point of view, 
became secondary. The weightiest motives of the 
law seemed of less moment than the pettiest scruples 
of superstition. ''The slaughter of a cow excites 

56 



HINDU MORALITY 

more horror among many of the Hindus than the 
slaying of a man." 

Veracity. It is through this ascetic disdain for 
the practically useful that truthfulness has become 
an almost submerged virtue in India. Max Muller. 
indeed, with a pardonable enthusiasm for the Orient, 
denies this charge of unveracity, but a few extracts 
from a vast and complex literature can have but 
little weight against the almost unanimous testimony 
of those who have had long and close acquaintance 
with the daily life of the Hindu people. To this 
day, says Lord Elphinstone, "unveracity remains 
the universal and incurable plague-spot in the moral 
life of India." ^ In Hindu households veracity is 
said to be scarcely recognized as a virtue and in 
the Anglo-Indian courts of justice native testimony 
is generally regarded as almost worthless. ^° And so 
everywhere throughout the East, "the dominant note 
of Asian individuality is in character a general in- 
difference to truth and respect for successful wile."^^ 

In fine, truthfulness is of course honored in Hindu 
ethics, but still its sanctity is over-shadowed, it loses 
something of its majesty and power because minor 
precepts and even mere superstitions are lifted 
above it. 

Justice. The Hindus, for the same reason, have 
given but a low place to^ justice, which, judged by 
the standard of utility, should stand at the very 
summit of the virtues. Theirs is the morality of 
dependence, resignation and submissiveness ; men 
must bow to the authority of the past, however 

57 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

iniquitous; innovation is impiety. Even in the 
Vedic hymns Varuna, the god of justice, the pro- 
tector of rights, the avenger of wrongs, is repre- 
sented as a waning divinity; his power is slowh 
yielding to that of Indra, the god of the stormy sky, 
of might and battle/^ It was a wonderful prophecy 
of the whole future of India wherein right was ever 
to yield to might, and justice vanish before tyranny 
and submissiveness. 

Ethical Decadence. Thus Hindu morality was 
under the doom of a continuous declension. The 
early Vedic hymns are nobly ethical; they adjure 
man to be "without reproach before the Infinite"; 
they recognize no wicked divinities, and no other 
mythology offends so- little against moral delicacy. 
But India, with all her enthusiasm for causes, did 
not comprehend that they cannot be really known 
save through their effects. Above all, she disdained 
to test her moral convictions by their social conse- 
quences. And so the distinctions between right and 
wrong constantly grew more confused and misty, 
until they finally vanished in the chill fog of such 
merely negative conceptions as "the Atman," 
"dreamless sleep," and unsocial asceticism. Then 
virtue came to be nothing more than "an ornament" ; 
it might be useful at the start, said Sankara, but it 
was no longer needed when "knowledg^e had once 
arisen." "He who knows the secondless reality 
may act as he likes ; moral distinctions no more con- 
cern him than they do' a dog." ^^ Or, as one of the 
ITpanishads expresses it : The thought att"ects not 
him what have I left undone, what evil done.^* 

58 



HINDU MORALITY 

And according to the Yoga philosophy virtue and 
vice are mere "inflictions" ; to him who can "dis- 
criminate" both are equally painful. 

But let us do no injustice to Indian morality. 
The Hindu has done what modern thought has not 
done ; he has maintained his faith in the moral order ; 
his ethic has foundations, and nearly one-half of the 
human race are indebted to him for all they know of 
a charity and self-sacrifice reaching beyond the nar- 
row bounds of family or tribe. 

Nevertheless, India's whole career vindicates our 
philosophy of history. The nature of thought is 
such that human progress can be maintained only 
through a certain equilibrium between tv/o com- 
plementary tendencies. The decadence of India is 
due to an ever increasing emphasis upon one of 
these tendencies and a corresponding neglect of the 
other. 

NOTES 

^ Deusaen, Ouilines of the Vedanta, 20. 

^ Buddha, 298. 

3 Ibid, 292. 

* Deussen, Pkiloscpky of the Upanishads, 48. D. asserts that the 

acceptance of this philosophy would "give the finishing touch to the 

Clirisltian consciousness. It would, undoubtedly, 
s Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, II. 105. 
« Maha-bharata, III. 13253. 
'' Ihid, XII. 5528. 
8 Townsend, Asia and Europe, 14. "We have no pity, ' said a Fandit 

to Townsend (p. 96). See also a chapter on "The Cruelty of 

Europe and Asia" (p. 260-7). 
" Elphinstone, History, India, I. 378. Macleod, On India and almost 

every Indian authority. 
■"' Maine, Village Coinmunilies, 225. 
^^ Curzon, The Far East, 4. 
^- Muir, Sanskrit Texts, V. 116. Earth, Religions of India, 19, doubts 

this dtcacence, but it seems to me on vague grounds. Bergaigne, 

La Religion Vedique, III. 142. 
^^ Jacob, Hindu Pantheism, 119. 
■"* Taithiriya Upanishad II. 9. 

59 



CHAPTER III 



THE SCIENCE OF INDIA 



To' India belongs the glory of having laid the 
foundations of science. A few years ago that 
assertion would have been eagerly disputed, in favor 
of the rival claims of Egypt, Chaldea and, above 
all, Greece. But recent investigations seem to have 
conclusively shown that the famous Pythagorean 
Theorem — the real starting point of geometry — 
together with most of the other doctrines taught by 
Pythagoras came through Babylon from beyond the 
Indus. ^ And, as we shall see in the next Book, the 
later scientific movement centring at Alexandria is 
directly traceable to influences from the same source. 
Algebra, also, we know to have been an Indian dis- 
covery introduced into the West by the Arabs at a 
still later period. Undeniably then India was the 
creator of mathematics and, that conceded, no one 
will dispute the assertion that she laid the founda- 
tions of all science. 

What now was the reason for this pre-eminence 
of India in mathematics? I hardly think that that 
question has ever before been asked; certainly it 
has never been answered. My own answer has two 
parts. 

60 



THE SCIENCE OF INDIA 

First, Hindu inquiry sought for processes of 
causation " rather than for mere Hkenesses and dif- 
ferences. It kept strict guard against that faUacy 
of resemblance by which even modern logic has been 
ensnared. From the relation of cause and effect, 
the Buddhist logicians insisted, invariable connec- 
tion is made known, "not through the mere observa- 
tion of the desired result in similar cases nor through 
the non-observation of it in dissimilar cases." ^ 

From this stress on causality there came a deeper 
insight into the nature of number. Others before 
me have noted that primitive man generally con- 
ceives only of what have been called material num- 
bers — that is numbers undistinguished from things 
numbered.* Something of this confusion seems to 
have lingered in Greek thought, if we may judge 
from its misty speculations concerning the P3^tha- 
gorean "numbers" and from the extreme clumsi- 
ness of its arithmetical notation. But the Indian 
mind had clear insight into the real nature of num- 
bers as purely abstract, as the mental product of a 
mental process of causation. 

Secondly, this engrossment with causes entailed 
neglect of results. But note now that mathematical 
processes, unlike physical ones, do not need to he 
veriHed by comparison zvitJi observed results. That 
is the transparent reason why India's scientific pre- 
eminence was confined to the mathematical sciences. 

Philological Science. An exception to the last 
remark, however, must be made in favor of the 
wonderful work done by Panini and others in 

6i 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

tracing the development of words to their original 
roots. No thinker of ancient Greece or Rome or 
even of modern times until the last century had 
dreamed of such an undertaking. Is not this 
another revelation of the peculiar bent of Hindu 
genius, always seeking for processes of causation, 
ever aspiring to know the origin of things? 

Physical Science. Already we have explained 
wh)^ Ancient India achieved so much in mathe- 
matical, and SO' little in physical science. The ab- 
stract products of mathematical processes are 
absolutely uniform ; the ratio of the diameter to the 
circumference, for example, remains precisely the 
same in all possible circles that imagination can 
conceive. But each product of any physical process 
is modified in a thousand ways by other processes 
and things in its environment; hence, no exact 
knowledge of Nature can be attained save through 
minute, cautious experiment and observation. But 
all such work the Indian scorned. The Bhagavat 
Purana utters but a commonplace of the national 
thought when it declares : "Nature is most beautiful, 
but none the less she is Maya, the false and cruel 
seducer of men." And in another passage we are 
told that "the senses are five brigands that bind and 
rob man as he wanders through the forests of ex- 
istence." 

Ph3^sical research, thus handicapped, evidentl)'- 
could not advance very far. In a word, the great 
Indian thinkers had the scientific aim but they 
lacked the scientific method. They yearned to know 

62 



THE SCIENCE OF INDIA 

the secret processes of Nature, to unveil the unit)'- 
and interdependence of all things, but their only 
method was that of poetic dreams and wild conjec- 
ture. What hope, for instance, was there for a sys- 
tem of mineralogy that began with the dogma that 
"gold was solidified light"? 

Medicine. Note also that Indian science seems 
to have been under that same doom of declension 
which we have already discovered in its religion 
and its morality, A marked instance thereof is 
afforded by the history of medicine. The ancient 
Brahmans began with a high enthusiasm for medical 
science, which they called a new Veda or revelation 
from heaven ; they studied anatomy with a zeal that 
did not shrink even from dissecting dead bodies, 
and their students were ingeniously trained to a high 
degree of skill in medical operations. They learned 
nothing from the Greeks but taught them much; 
Arab medicine was founded on translations from 
Sanskrit works, and European down tO' the seven- 
teenth century was largely based upon the Arabic. 

But while Indian medicine was thus being car- 
ried to all parts of the civilized world, it had been 
for a thousand years before the date just named 
steadily declining at home. Gradually the learned 
Brahmans abandoned their medical practice, yielding 
it to a lower caste. Eventually even the latter grew 
tired of their profession and it fell into the hands of 
a still lower order — charlatans, who- gathered a few 
herbs and practiced magical incantations very much 
in the style of the savage "medicine-man." " 

63 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

There is a very common because very easy way of 
explaining such decadence as due to what is called 
"race exhaustion." But that is a mere metaphor 
which explains nothing and only misleads. India's 
intellectual and moral energies had not been ex- 
hausted or even weakened. Her real trouble was 
not exhausation, but exaggeration, unchecked de- 
velopment of a one-sided impulse. 

History. India's lack of the scientific method is 
forcibly evinced in her indifference to^ history. Her 
institutions, thought and life are all instinct with 
an immense reverence for the past, but this reverence 
loses itself in its very immensity; it passes disdain- 
fully over the immediate past and wanders off into 
the infinite and eternal. Exact observation of facts, 
interest in human affairs, criticism, free inquiry, all 
the elements of the historic method were wanting. 
And so if it were not for a few coins and inscrip- 
tions, together with some slight accounts given by 
travellers from Greece, China and elsewhere the 
history of India would be virtually a blank." 

In this survey we have not followed the usual 
fashion of theorists and selected special instances 
that happened to fit our theory. But we have taken 
the whole round of Indian development in the 
several sciences and found it governed at every 
point by one fundamental law" — eager search for 
causal processes or principles, but with scant obser- 
vation of results. In the mathematical sciences, this 
second factor, observation is not required; and 
of them India indisputably was the creator. In the 

64 



THE SCIENCE OF INDIx\ 

physical sciences, where everything depends upon 
observation of results, she achieved but little. And 
the exceptions serve only to give more proof of the 
rule. Etymology, for instance, is pre-eminently a 
search for origins. And in medical inquiry concern 
about results is made compulsory by the very nature 
and purpose oi the science. 

Engrossment with causes, neglect of results. 
Who now will venture to come forward and show 
that this does not form a philosophic explanation of 
India's scientific development? As for any other 
theory there is none. And, so far as I know, there 
has not even been a serious attempt to form one. 

NOTES 

^ Garbe, Pliilosophy of Ancient India, 43. Even Pythagoras' prohibition 
of beans was of Hindu origin. Hopkins, Religions of India, 559, 
fully endorses Garbe's conclusions. 

- Oldenberg {Buddha, 242) notes that Sankahara means in Buddhism 
both process and product. The emphasis upon processes of causa- 
tion is thus so strong that the product is merged in it. "The 
world is only the world's process" (p. 240). "The made has 
existence only in the process of being made." 

^ Madhava Acharya, Sarva Darsana, 12. 

* Wallace, Hegel's Logic, Introduction. 

* Hunter, Hist. India, 64-5. 

■^ "Bei dern Hindu hat die Religion alle Geschichte Zerstort." Klaproth, 
Wiirdigung d. a. Gesch. quoted in Lassen's Indische Alterthums- 
kiinde, II. 3. Lassen also notes other causes all derivative from the 
generic one noted above. Concerning the low estimate of history 
in modern India, consult Malcolm, Memoirs of India, II. 195 and 
I. 59. 



65 



CHAPTER IV 

THE ART OF INDIA 

I. Theory of Art 

So many different aesthetic theories have been 
invented and have given rise to so much fruitless 
controversy, that modern opinion has come to doubt 
whether any really systematic conception of the 
beautiful was possible. Nevertheless, from our 
present point of view, still another theory is irre- 
sistibly suggested. It is as follows : 

Beauty is the dim manifestation of causal unity 
amidst variety. 

Leaving otit the italicized words, we have simply 
Aristotle's theory that beauty is the manifestation 
of unity in variety. That doubtless was the uni- 
versally accepted doctrine long- before his day. But 
we make it immensely more definite and truthful by 
adding- the emphasized words. 

First, the added word "causal" is very important 
as distinguishing between the lax, superficial unity 
of mere resemblance and the true unity of depend- 
ence upon a common cause. 

Second. Of still greater importance is the em- 
phasis upon dimness of manifestation. That ex- 

66 



THE ART OF INDIA 

plains the difference between Art and Science. Art 
dimly suggests to feeling what science has not yet 
disclosed in exact and formulated terms to thought. 
Secondly, it explains why we recognize the beautiful 
through the emotions: for the very essence of the 
emotions lies in this dimness of suggestion; they 
stir us so profoundly because they partly unveil 
what lies beyond the range of exact thought; the 
intellect instead of mastering them is mastered by 
them. Furthermore, the imagination is stimulated 
by the almost illimitable expansiveness of this dim 
suggestion: it is like the obscurity of night unveil- 
ing a universe that is hidden by the open light of 
day. 

I have now to show that this theory explains those 
empirical rules which are universally accepted as 
principles of beauty. 

Beauty of Form. The curve has always been 
recognized as the line of beauty. This rule is re- 
garded as an aesthetic axiom, something "ultimate 
and inexplicable," which everybody admits without 
knowing the reason why. But from our present 
point of view its explanation is evident. In a curve 
changing its direction at every point is infinite 
variety; but this incessant variation is everywhere 
dependent upon and governed by a principle of unity 
obscurely manifested to aesthetic feeling long before 
its mathematical formula was exactly determined 
and known. 

But our explanation goes even deeper than that. 
It goes on to explain the different aesthetic values 

67 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

attached to different kinds of curves. Thus, ac- 
cording to Hogarth, the serpentine Hne is pre- 
eminently beautiful; on the other hand, straight 
lines are "too lean and poor," while circles or nearly 
circular lines are too "gross." These rules, laid 
down by the unerring instinct of a great master, 
are evidently correct, but Hogarth's explanation of 
them is a mere metaphor naturally suggested to a 
painter of portraits. A circle is the least beautiful 
of all curves, not because it is too gross or fat, but 
because its unity is too openly, instead of dimly, 
manifested. The regularity, the dependence upon 
some one fixed law is sO' obvious and obtrusive as to 
almost hide the other element — inlinite, incessant 
variation. Hence the superior beauty of the ellipse, 
the serpentine line, etc., where the regularity or 
dependence is less obvious, hides, as it were, behind 
open and conspicuous variation. 

That, then, is the law of beauty in form; the 
variety is sensuous and evident, but that upon which 
the variety depends is obscurely felt. Even in our 
brief survey many dark passages in art, especially 
in architecture, will be made luminous by this law. 

Beauty of Color. The charm of color, likewise, 
has long been accounted something inexplicably 
"organic," or primitive. But from our present 
point of view this charm, it seems to me, no longer 
remains a mystery. On the one hand colors are the 
very symbols of variation and contrast; on the 
other, they are marked by a subtile gradation where- 
by one hue glides imperceptibly into^ another with 

68 



THE ART OF INDIA 

infinite grace and delicacy. And therein lies the 
secret of their beauty. This gradation dimly reveals 
their interdependence, their community of origin 
and nature. 

Hence savages and children delight most in 
gaudy, glaring colors. They are impressed only 
by contrasts and changes ; their eyes have not been 
opened to the delicate transitions, the graded tints, 
the dim intimations of dependence. 

Beauty of Sound. In music there is the same 
dim disclosure of causal unity, of some subtile bond 
of dependence between a multitude of varying, con- 
trasted sounds. Take away this secret interdepend- 
ence, and there would be left only noise, a jagged 
series of sensations, irregular, harsh and irritating. 
Take away the dimness of disclosure, substitute for 
it some obvious regularity of similar sounds and 
the result would soon be an insufferable monotony. 

It is well known that savage or primitive music 
is exceedingly monotonous. The reason is that the 
primitive mind has not learned to appreciate any 
deeper unity than that of mere regularity, a uni- 
form succession of similarities ; it does not attend 
to those dim intimations presented everyv/here in 
Nature, of a unity of dependence between things 
most diverse and widely contrasted. Even the 
Greeks and Romans knew nothing higher in music 
than melody; we shall see hereafter that harmony, 
the hidden, mathematical interdependence of con- 
trasted strains was the invention of a later civiliza- 
tion than theirs. 

69 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

Theory of Art. Beauty then in all its three 
grand divisions of form, color and sound is the dim 
manifestation of causal unity or interdependence 
amidst variety, and art is the appreciation by feeling 
of these two factors in the beautiful. Hence the 
distinction between art and science is the distinction 
between feeling and thought; art is the emotional 
appreciation of the two factors ; science is a recogni- 
tion so definite as to be expressible in exact formulas. 
It is this theory of art which we hope to verify 
through our study of sesthetic development in the 
different forms of civilization. 

II. The Indian Love of Nature 

The modern world has been deluged with talk 
about the poetic love of Nature. Nevertheless, 
there has been a curious silence concerning what 
ought to be, apparently, the first question suggested 
by such a theme: What is the origin of this, the 
noblest impulse in the realm of art ? Why was this 
poetic passion for Nature so strangely lacking 
among the Greeks, the most artistic of all races? 
What gave it such vigor in Indian art, which, in 
many other respects, was so defective? What has 
been its fate in the Middle Ages and in modern 
times? If my philosophy can satisfactorily answer 
these questions it will deserve some remembrance, 
for it will have filled up a serious gap in the history 
O'f human thought. 

Vedic Sentiment. The genesis of India's love of 
70 



THE ART OF INDIA 

Nature has already been indicated in our account of 
her science. Her beHef in the unity and interde- 
pendence of all things was deep and strong, but it 
lacked clearness and scientific exactitude. But the 
very essence of art is this dimness of intimation — 
the dark enigmatic disclosure to feeling of what 
cannot be distinctly formulated in thought. And 
so it happens that the poetic love of Nature, this 
tumult of feeling which cannot rise to- the serenity 
of exact knowledge, forms the vital breath of all 
Indian poetry and art.^ It pervades the earliest 
Vedas; nor must it there be confounded with mere 
nature-worship, which often arises more from, fear 
than love.^ 

Epic Poetry. In the epic period, the love of 
Nature has gained a still richer development. It is 
no longer confined mainly tO' celestial phenomena 
but reaches down to what seems least and most 
trivial — the world of plants, the insects, the rocks 
and barren places of the earth. "All the writers 
of great epics show themselves overpowered, as it 
were, by emotions connected with their interpreta- 
tion of natural scenery."^ In the Ramayana even 
the huts of the hermits are set in such charming 
landscapes — strewed with wild flowers, engirt with 
great forest trees, bearing pure and delicious fruits, 
enlivened with deer, singing-birds and nymphs — 
that they "resembled the habitation of Brahma."* 

The Hindu Drama. Here also the chief inspira- 
tion and charm come from the sentiment for 
Nature. The forest and ocean scenes of Kalidasa, 

71 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

especially, are among the finest poetic creations of 
any land or age. Even the individuality of his 
characters seem to depend in some strangely subtile 
way upon the environment of flowers, gardens and 
forests amid which they move. It was this which 
so captivated Goethe that he ranked Kalidasa's best 
known work as the masterpiece of the world's art. 
Scholars have disputed much over an alleged indebt- 
edness of the Indian dramatists to Greek influences ; 
but the controversy seems rather childish when we 
remember that the one feature which forms the 
Lmique, supreme glory of the Hindu drama is, as I 
shall show, utterly lacking in the Greek.^^ 

Even in a later period of comparative decline the 
enthusiasm for Nature did not abate; the Gita Go- 
vinda is radiant with it. In the lyrical poetry of 
India, also, "the plant and animal world play a most 
important part and is treated with great charm." *^ 
In fine, the Brahma Purana portrays the very soul 
of all Indian poetry in its allusion to "a sense of 
mysterious harmony which pervades the world and 
echoes in the human heart." 

Asceticism. One chief source of modern error 
concerning the love of Nature lies in the failure 
to distinguish it from a merely sensuous enjoyment 
of external things. Some critics have been so blind 
to this obvious distinction that they have attempted 
to prove that the Greeks had the poetic love of 
Nature by collecting passages which show only ap- 
preciation for what is pleasant and profitable in the 
outer world — the cool shade of the forest, the breeze 

72 



THE ART OF INDIA 

from the ocean, the promise of vintage and harvest. 
But these kinds of feeHng are more than different, 
they are antagonistic; the more man is absorbed in 
sensuous enjoyment of the world, the more neglect- 
ful he will be oi its higher meanings. Oriental 
thinkers recognized this truth and as usual exag- 
gerated it. Their poetic love of Nature went hand 
in hand with an unrelenting asceticism. To^ them 
the world reeked with pain and woe. Nature was 
a cruel illusion, a feverish dream. But none the less 
the dream had an ineffable meaning and its inter- 
pretation was music to the soul. 

III. The Imitative Arts 

Furthermore, a grave artistic peril lurked in this 
poetic interpretation of Nature which cast such a 
lustre over Indian art. This profound sense of the 
causal unity or interdependence of things was 
always in danger of being exaggerated into the 
negation, or, at least, the neglect of their differences 
and individuality. Like science, the perfection of 
art demands the equilibrium of the two comple- 
mentary tendencies of thought; it must be inspired 
not only by the impulse tO' divine the causes, the 
origin and hidden unity of things, but also by the 
counter-impulse to portray the visible results, the 
actual ever-changing things precisely as they are. 

But the Hindu had as little regard for exact, 
realistic imitation in art as for patient observation in 
science, and for the same reason. He distrusted 

73 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

the senses; much study of phenomena led only to 
bewilderment and delusion; the true meaning of the 
world was to be found only by the flash of inspira- 
tion, the first swift glance of poetic instinct. Or, as 
the Sankhya philosophy puts it : "Nothing is more 
modest than Nature — saying 'I have been seen,' she 
does not again expose herself to the gaze of the 
soul." 

Painting and Sculpture. This slight regard for 
imitation explains the relative rates of progress 
made by the several arts in India. In the specially 
imitative arts, painting and sculpture, no great suc- 
cess has been attained. In painting, indeed, hardly 
anything notable has been accomplished. In sculp- 
ture the chief advance was probably due to Greek 
influences that began to be felt after Alexander's 
invasion, and even here the onl)^ great works are 
the statues of Buddha — ideals of repose rather than 
ideals of life-like action, such as those which the 
Avonder-working genius of Greece cut from the mo- 
tionless stone. 

Prose. This scorn for exact imitation also ex- 
plains the strange fact that Hindu literature is al- 
most exclusively poetical in form. Ordinarily, 
poetry comes first, then prose. But in a quite early 
period of Indian culture a simple and compact prose 
had gradually been developed, but later on "this 
form is abandoned and a rhythmic one adopted in 
its stead, which is employed exclusively, even for 
strictly scientific expositions." ^ There are, indeed, 
some fragments of prose, but they are always inter- 

74 



THE ART OF INDIA 

woven with rhythmical portions; the philosophical 
Sutras, also, are so condensed and technical as to 
seem rather algebraic symbols than true prose. 
The Buddhist legends are likewise in prose, but 
they were written in a peculiar language. In fine, 
prose- writing was completely arrested in the course 
of its development and declined altogether. Any- 
thing more clumsy than the prose of the later Indian 
romances and of the Indian commentaries can hardly 
be.'' These facts, attested by the highest authority, 
seem inexplicable in the case of a people so ad- 
vanced in culture, so profoundly thoughtful as the 
Hindus. But from our present point of view the 
explanation is clear as crystal. The special use and 
function of prose is to express clearly and precisely 
the differences, variations and individuality of 
things ; and all these the Indian emphasis upon causal 
unity was ever striving tO' ignore. 

Continuous Decline of Realism. "The great and 
golden rule of art as of life," it has been well said,'^ 
"is that the more distinct and sharp and wiry the 
outline the more perfect the work of art. * * * Ra- 
phael and Michael Angelo and Albert Durer are 
known by this and this alone." But this precise, 
clear-cut imitation of reality was more and more 
neglected in Indian art. "Closing the doors of the 
senses," became the one supreme formula for at- 
taining the beautiful.^ The enthusiasm for the un- 
seen led more and more to the caricature of the 
seen. The twilight of m5^stery darkened into a 
midnight of enigma and self-contradiction. Sym- 

75 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

bol was added to symbol, life-likeness disappeared, 
the grotesque and monstrous took the place of Na- 
ture's simple beauty. 

IV. The Non-imitative Arts 

It follows as an evident corollary from what has 
already been said that the Indians would be far more 
successful in the non-imitative than in the imitative 
arts. But it may be well for a fuller verifying of 
our law to point out a little more in detail the secret 
of their success. 

Music. The boundless veneration for the Vedic 
h3^mns was a constant spur to musical study; there 
at least there could be no "closing of the doors of 
the senses." And so from the earliest days research 
into the mysteries of rhythm was carried on with 
an incredible patience and ardor. The Brahmanas 
declare that even the harmony of the heavens had 
its origin, its fundamental cause in the harmony 
which pervaded the "eternal" Vedas before time 
began.^ Centuries afterward the Pythagoreans, 
who, as is now known, borrowed so much from In- 
dia, re-echoed this belief in their famous doctrine 
concerning "the music of the spheres." But in less 
mystical and speculative ways European music owes 
much to India. From her were derived the chief 
practical improvements in Greek music, and, in a 
later period, her musical art was carried by the 
Persians to the Arabians, and by the latter finally 
introduced into Europe. Thus in music, as in 

76 



THE ART OF IInDIA 

mathematics, India has been the world's first great 
teacher. 

Architecture. The building art has to deal with 
the most intractable materials in large masses; it 
must adapt itself to utilitarian designs, must make 
large use of experiment, exact measurement and 
other mechanical aids. Thus architecture, from its 
very nature, necessarily tends to foster the realistic 
spirit. And thus it placed a heavy restraint upon 
what we have seen to be the peculiar vice of Indian 
art — that excess of the unifying impulse which 
sacrifices distinctness and exactitude to some wild 
dream of the grotesque or the formless. This is 
the philosophic explanation, I think, oi the well- 
knovvm fact that India continued tO' excel in archi- 
tecture even when other arts were decaying. A 
recent historian, speaking- of the period beginning 
with the seventh century A.D., says that its history 
is "a melancholy record of degradation and decad- 
ence in government, literature, religion and art, with 
the exception of temple architecture.''' '^^ 

Of course we cannot enter here into all the com- 
plex, obscure details of Hindu architecture, nor is 
there any need of it. Our law is sufficiently veri- 
fied by appealing to a single feature of that archi- 
tecture — but that its crowning feature, its noblest 
and most characteristic creation. When the epic 
poet would describe Ayodhya, the ideal city, he 
sang of its "stately palaces with domes like the tops 
of mountains." ^^ And surely that was the master- 
stroke of the unifying impulse in Indian architecture 

77 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

— the dome, co-ordinating every lower part and 
detail, and lifting above them a symbol of infinite 
unity borrowed from the very skies. 

NOTES 

'•Lassen, Indische Alterthumskilnde, II. 511. 

- The Vedic Pantheon had only a very few evil gods; and these are not 

worshipped nor even propitiated, but unconditionally abhorred by 

men, fought and conquered by the Powers of Good. Ragozin, 

Vedic IndiOj 134. 
2 Humboldt, Cosmos, II. 52. My obligations to Humboldt on this theme 

are very great. 
* Wheeler, History, India, II. 240. 
^a Mahaffy {Silver Age of Greek History, 28) claims Hindu drama 

greatly indebted to Greek, but ignores its crowning peculiarity noted 

above. 
*a Macdonnell, Hist. Sanskrit Literature, 343 and 353. 
^ Weber, Hist. Indian Literature, 182. 

'^ Ibid, p. 183. i 

■^ William Blake quoted by Dowden {Studies in Literature, 87). 
^ Bhagavad Gita, VII. 165; and many other places. 
^ Weber, Hist. Indian Literature, 23. 
^o Smith, Early History of India, 301. 
^^ Ramayana in Wheeler's History of India, Vol. 2, p. 3. 



78 



CHAPTER V 

THE BUDDHISTIC REVOLT 

I. The Doctrines of Buddhism 

The simple truth which I seek to estabhsh in this 
chapter is that Buddhism in India was a revolt and 
not a reform. Simple as it seems it will, if proved, 
throw a good deal of light upon the long and per- 
plexing controversy concerning the relations of the 
Buddhistic and Brahmanic religions. 

A development so one-sided and exaggerated as 
that dominating Indian life and thought would in- 
evitably invite the rise of the counter-impulse. 
There must always have been more or less of vague 
discontent ; and this dissenting sentiment was finally 
organized into system by the genius of Buddha. 
But the new movement introduced nO' really new 
and vital principle. It was but the outward revolt 
of men who were still inwardly enslaved by the 
prevailing impulse. To prove this let us first notice 
some of the chief Buddhistic doctrines. 

Buddhahood. On its surface the doctrine of 
Buddhahood seems an amazing exaltation of that 
human individuality which the Hindu sense of de- 

79 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

pendence had so belittled and depressed. The 
Greeks, boldest of all champions of individualism, 
stopped at the doctrine of apotheosis — the elevation 
of exceptional men to the rank of divinity. But 
Buddhism teaches that any man, by his own unaided 
efforts, may attain a summit of glory and perfec- 
tion upon which even gods gaze with envy. The 
gods desire to become Buddhas, but they can gain 
those sublime heights only by becoming men. 
When a man attains this supreme estate, then the 
gods worship him, the universe shouts for joy, the 
ocean becomes sweet and lotus-wreaths hang from 
the sky. 

And we are further told that "the Buddhas, who 
have been, are, and will be, are more numerous 
than the grains of sand on the banks of the 
Ganges." ^ 

But in all this no real honor was done to human 
individuality. Thrusting aside the whole confused 
controversy concerning Nirvana, one fact remains 
indisputable; this supreme estate of Buddhahood 
could be attained only by the surrender of all that 
constitutes true individuality. Volition, desire, 
memory, consciousness — all these are put off by the 
aspiring soul on its way to become a Buddha. 
Practically then these gigantic promises are a hollow 
mockery. The old Brahmanic negation of individ- 
uality is merely put in another and absurder 
form. 

Theology. So Buddhistic atheism might seem 
at first view to flatly contradict the old Indian sense 

80 



THE BUDDHISTIC REVOLT 

of dependence upon the Infinite. But really it does 
nothing of the kind. It merely strips the Infinite 
of every spiritual or positive attribute and retains it 
as blind, abstract causality or Karma. Thus, as 
will be shown in treating of Buddhistic pessimism, 
instead of the Indian sense of dependence being 
abolished or even its worse exaggerations checked, 
it is made a still more crushing burden. 

Sacrifice. The Buddhists also rejected what was 
merely formal and ritualistic in orthodox sacri- 
ficialism. But the Brahmans themselves had, vir- 
tually, done that long before. What the Upanishads 
had taught esoterically, the Buddhists had preached 
openly; partly through excessive veneration for 
animal life," partly to injure Brahmanic ascendancy. 
But the essence of the sacrificial idea the Brahmans 
conceived as self-sacrifice, ascetic renunciation. 
And surely the Buddhists fell no whit behind their 
rivals in ascetic extravagances. Think of the five 
hundred princesses who, according to the Buddhist 
legend, gave up their palaces, their wealth and life 
of luxury and came "with bleeding feet, covered 
with dust and half-dead," to seek the cloister and 
the beggar's bowl.^ Instead of abolishing, Buddh- 
ism immensely expanded the sacrificial sentiment in 
India^ organized it into a vast monastic system. 

Buddhist Ethics. Most scholars seem now to 
agree with Weber that the essential teaching of 
Buddhism "is entirely identical with the corre- 
sponding Brahmanical doctrine." There is a ten- 
dency, however, to claim for Buddhism an ethical 

8i 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

superiority/ But I ani unable to find any marked 
difference except an increased emphasis upon the 
sanctity of animal life. Like Jainism it regarded 
the life of an insect as entitled to nO' less respect 
than that of a man. In practice, indeed, the sanctity 
of animal was placed above that of human life, and 
the absurd spectacle was sometimes witnessed of a 
man being put to death for killing an animal or even 
for eating meat.^ It is impossible for me, at least, 
to believe that any such absurd appreciation of values 
as that forms a real advance in morality. 

Pessimism. But by far the most familiar fea- 
ture of Buddhistic morality is its pessimism. It is 
also its most persistent feature; there is no chance 
here for the usual dispute as to- what was primitive 
and what was subsequent corruption: from first to 
last pessimism remains the centre and the circum- 
ference of all Buddhist teaching. What caused it 
to assume such enormous proportions is a problem 
oft discussed but never solved, except by some vague 
references to imaginary climatic influences." But 
here again our philosophy ofifers a simple and satis- 
factory solution. 

According to the orthodox Brahmanic philosophy, 
Brahma the Infinite Spirit was the only reality : all 
finite things were Maya or illusion. But Buddhism 
discarded Brahma also as mere illusion; the only 
reality left was Karma, abstract causality, the end- 
less circle of pain producing pain. According to 
the Buddhist view, the sole reality is Pain. 

There was some faint, far-away gleam of hope in 
82 



THE BUDDHISTIC REVOLT 

the Brahman's prospect of awakening from his 
dream into mystic union with the One Soul: but 
absolutely none in the prospect of awakening intO' an 
existence where nothing existed but Pain. 

From all these considerations I think we may 
safely conclude that Buddhism was a revolt, not a 
reform, that it only riveted tighter the chains it 
sought to break. 

II. The Rise and Fall of Buddhism 

From the above study of the internal features of 
Buddhism as a system of thought the transition is 
easy to a historical explanation of its external for- 
tunes. Evidently the military power or warrior 
caste would naturally lean towards a realistic, 
utilitarian movement — the counter-impulse to that 
which dominated India. The power of the sword 
looks mainly to immediate, visible results: it deals 
with the stern, ever-present facts of life and death; 
when it thinks of causes it regards them solely as 
means to an end. From this under-current of ten- 
dency inherent in the warrior caste Buddhism 
arose. 

"Everywhere in India," writes a Chinese travel- 
ler,"^ "the kings had been firm believers in the Law." 
And the reasons for this royal devotion to Buddhism 
are not far to seek. At that time the constitutional 
checks upon the conduct of a king were only such as 
were imposed by the presence of the Brahman. 
The Rajah was regarded as a divine administrator 

83 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

of the law, but the law was to be interpreted by the 
Brahmans. He was a despotic sovereign, but he 
was restrained in every direction by religious obli- 
gations and controlled by Brahmanical advisers.® 
"If the Rajah is unjust, untruthful and unkind to 
the Brahmans/' said the Institutes oi Manu, "his 
reputation will be like a lump of ghee in the 
river," ^ 

It was but human nature that the kings should 
grow tired of much priestly surveillance and wel- 
come the Buddhistic revolt against Brahrnanic 
ascendancy. But recent researches have thrown so 
much light upon the obscure history of early India 
that we can go farther than this. We can discern, 
I think, what kind of kings were most apt to turn 
Buddhists, and what motives specially actuated 
them. And thus we can show a quite minute cor- 
respondence between the historic facts and what 
our theory demands. 

And first, the kings who thus revolted were 
not ordinary Rajahs, sovereigns of petty principali- 
ties, but great kings, men of vast ambition and even 
of genius who now and then rose to a truly imperial 
power over divided India. Such, for example, was 
the famous Asoka, who, according to a recent his- 
torian, "made the fortune of Buddhism,'' coming 
to its support when, more than two centuries after 
the death of its founder, it was still only one of 
many obscure sects struggling' for existence and 
survival. ^^ Two or three centuries later came 
another great conqueror, Kanishka, whose renown 

84 



THE BUDDHISTIC REVOLT 

in Buddhist annals is scarcely less than that of 
Asoka. To' these two great monarchs, together 
with Buddha, belongs the honor of having been the 
creators of Buddhism as a world-wide religion. 

For, secondly, men with their imperial power and 
genius not only resented priestly interference, but 
had a natural desire to^ rule over the spiritual as well 
as the secular life of their subjects. And so under 
their supervision the two Great Councils were held 
which gave to Buddhism its final form. 

The attitude of Buddhism towards the caste sys- 
tem was also most congenial to the great emperors. 
The Vishnu Purana speaks of a period probably not 
long before Alexander's invasion — when the reign 
of "high-born" princes ended and that of princes of 
the Sudra caste began. Sandragupta the grand- 
father of Asoka was an adventurer of this low 
caste ; ^^ and the dynasty to which Kanishka be- 
longed were casteless foreigners. Note, however, 
that the caste system as a social institution was 
never disturbed by Buddhism: it was recognized as 
the ground-work of the political fabric, as a part 
of those inevitable ills which man must endure until 
he is released from the chain of births and the 
misery of existence. The social reform ascribed to 
Buddhism by some writers ^" went nO' farther than 
to apply a sort of balm tO' the wounded pride of 
imperial adventurers. 

The Sangha. Buddhistic monasticism also might 
well meet with favor in the sight of imperial despots. 
Its priests secluded in their cloisters were isolated 

85 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

from the practical affairs of life and gave but little 
trouble. The Brahman on the contrary for the 
most of his life was a householder and intensely- 
interested in public affairs. When Alexander at- 
tempted the conquest of India he was forced to 
treat the Brahmans with great severity, we are told, 
because with patriotic fury they urged the people 
on to resistance and revolt.^^ 

Other characteristics of the Buddhist polity might 
be noted, but perhaps enough has been said to show 
that it was but a phase of Indian development ex- 
ternally modified so as to meet the exigences of im- 
perialism. But its fundamental principles were 
radically identical with those dominating the whole 
Indian movement. When the last of the great mon- 
archies fell Buddhism disappeared, or rather de- 
parted into more monarchical lands ; and Brahman- 
ism was left without a rival.^* 



NOTES 

1 Hardy, Mar,ual of Buddhism, 89. 

^ Smith, Early History of India, 159 and 167. Asoka categorically pro- 
hibited only tloody sacrifices. Their renewal was the usual sign 
of a Brahmanic reaction (p. 179 and 266). 

'Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, 311. 

* Hopkins, Religions of India, 479. Hopkins asserts that Buddhism is 
"permeated with an active altruism," while Brahmanism never 
got beyond a negative one. 

" Smith, Hist, of India, 156. 

" Oldenberg {Buddha, 11) is the ablest supporter of the climate theory. 
But ably refuted by Hopkins {Religions of India, .315). Hopkins, 
however, absurdly maintained that Buddhistic pessimism, "so far 
as concerns earth," also pervades Christianity fp. 316). 

" Fa Hien, Btid-dhistic Kingdoms. 

^ Wheeler, History of India, II. 587. 

^ Manu, VII. 34. "Every morning the Raja should rise at early dawn 

86 



THE BUDDHISTIC REVOLT 



and respectfully attend to Brahmans who are versed in the Vedas 
and in the science of morals" (35). 

1" Smith, Early History of India. 

*^ Muller, Chips from a German Workshop, I. 22. 

*2 Burnouf, Introduction a I'Histoire du Buddhisme, I. 14 and 21 j, 
St. Hilaire, Du Buddhisme. 

" Plutarch, Alexander, LIX. and LXIV. See also Shahrastani, 
Religianspartheien, II. 374. 

'* Weber {Ind. Literatur, 248, also Ind. Studien, III. 132) regards 
Buddha's innovations as mainly speculative. Koppen, Die Relig. 
d. Buddha, II. 125, regards them as mainly ethical and practical. 
Vassilief, Le Boiiddisme, 12, etc., considers Buddha a mere en- 
thusiast, whose whole thought was crude and vague. Cunningham, 
Bhilsa Topes, 167, finds the cause of Buddhism's failure in its 
monasticisni. Rhys Davids, Ind. Buddhism, on the contrary, counts 
that the chief source of its strength. As for the common view 
that the Buddhists were expelled by persecution, Barth shows 
(Religions of India, 133-5) that they were the persecutors rather than 
the persecuted^ 



87 



CHAPTER VI 

SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN INDIA 

I. Political Structure 

The external or political structure of Indian so- 
ciety was feudal. And here again the facts of his- 
tory precisely correspond with what might be de- 
duced from our fundamental principle. In the 
one-sided and exaggerated development of Indian 
life, its engrossment with unseen, ultimate causes, 
its absorption in the spiritual and the eternal, made 
it naturally neglectful of the external structure of 
society, of forms of government and modes of ad- 
ministration. It was enough to revere the ancient 
customs and to submit humbly to the divine decrees. 
A man's station in life, his good or evil fortune, 
the virtue or vice of his rulers, all external things 
were but the products of the endless process of moral 
causation. 

Feudalism. Thus the Aryan tribes preserved 
their original constitutions modified somewhat, of 
course, by increase of wealth and culture and other 
changes coming through the conquest of India. 
Now and then short-lived empires arose, but even 
they were radically feudal like the German Empire 

88 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN INDIA 

in mediaeval Europe for example. But there is one 
vast difference between Indian and European 
feudalism which must not be overlooked. In feudal 
Europe a certain unity of thought and feeling was 
created by a vast spiritual hierarchy with the pomp 
and splendor of which we are all familiar. But the 
Brahmans had no such aid : each stood alone ; and 
yet throughout all India they developed a marvellous 
unity of faith from which neither Buddha nor any 
other sectary ever essentially departed and which 
still endures. It is another instance of India's in- 
difference to the external. 

Political Conditions. So much unconcern about 
political forms and methods would seem to give 
large openings for tyranny and extortion; and yet 
all the foreign travellers whose accounts have been 
preserved speak in most glowing terms concerning 
public affairs in India. The lavish praise bestowed 
by the Greek ambassador Megasthenes is too^ well 
known to need more than mention here. Seven cen- 
turies later the Cliinese traveller, Fa Hien, paints 
an equally pleasing picture of the government of 
Malwa; the people lived happily under a govern- 
ment that did not worry ; "they have not tO' register 
their households or attend tO' any magistrates or 
rules" ; taxes were light and the people were left free 
to prosper each in his own way.^ TwO' centuries 
later another Chinese traveller repeats substantially 
the same story of light burdens and an easy-going 
government. He tells also of being present at an 
assembly which the king held every five years for the 
^89 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

purpose of giving away in charity the surplus that 
had accumulated in the royal treasury during that 
period. Half a million people gathered : seventy 
days were consumed in bestowing gifts upon the 
poor and needy of all sects alike; even the royal 
jewels and robes were given away, so that at the 
end the king had to borrow a second-hand garment 
for his own use." 

Such were the politics of India in the golden age 
of her literature, philosophy and art. 

II. Labor 

But the true centre of interest in all social studies 
is not the external or political frame-work of society 
but its inner life as reflected in the industrial activi- 
ties of the people. What then is the law governing 
the industrial movement in India? 

The basis of this law is to be found, I think, in 
the evident fact that labor is the cause of wealth. 
That does not mean that labor is the sole cause; 
other agencies may co-operate; but nevertheless 
human labor and wealth are cause and effect. 

Lazv of Indian Industry. But we have seen so 
far that the law governing- Indian civilization is 
that of extreme emphasis upon causes and a corre- 
sponding neglect of results. The remainder of this 
chapter will be devoted to showing that this law 
is still more clearly and fully verified in India's in- 
dustrial history. When left free and untrammelled 
she has always exalted labor; and, on the other hand, 

90 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN INDIA 

she has discouraged that acquisitive or trading im- 
pulse which cares only for the results of labor. 

The Exaltation of Labor. The present wretch- 
edness of India's laboring classes is so well known 
that to speak of her ever having exalted labor may 
seem a palpable absurdity. But we must remem- 
ber the utter ruin that was wrought in her civiliza- 
tion by the Mahometan conquest centuries ago. To 
do her justice we must compare her life with that 
of Greece or Rome at corresponding periods of time. 
And in industrial art her success was as marvellous 
as their failure was complete. She discovered — 
what Greece and Rome never learned — the great se- 
cret of training her people to habits of patient, 
skilled, voluntary labor. In that respect she did 
even more than modern civilisation has been able to 
accomplish. Under the most unfavorable condi- 
tions that can be imagined, in a climate where the 
incentives to labor are slight and everything predis- 
poses to languor and repose, she taught her people 
to labor skilfully persistently without converting 
them into slaves. 

Furthermore, India thus educated in Industry be- 
came the workshop of the world. She wove the 
cottons and silks worn by the people of Greece and 
Rome : she supplied in the main the few luxuries of 
a manufactured kind that ancient civilisation de- 
manded. And during the Christian era she still 
continued down to a comparatively recent period to 
be the world's chief work-shop. During the Middle 
Ages the great Italian cities rose to wealth and 

91 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HTSTORY 

power through their traffic in the manufactures of 
the East. Northern Europe finally learned to supply 
itself with woolens, but in the manufacture of silks 
and the finer cottons India kept control of the market 
until the latter part of the eighteenth century. 

These are palpable facts, although their signifi- 
cance has been lost upon economists and historians. 
By what means, then, did India thus educate her 
people to these habits of skilled, victorious toil? 
Some of the chief means were as follows : 

Absence of Slavery. In Greece, popularly sup- 
posed to be the cradle of liberty, the slaves out- 
numbered the free. But when the Greeks first came 
in contact with India they were greatly surprised to 
find that there was no slavery there." Modern 
scholars, however, have noted that there is no period 
of Indian literature in which there is not mention 
of slaves ; and so have wondered why the keen-eyed 
Greek ambassador, Megasthenes, failed to find any 
during his long residence in the country. My ex- 
planation is this : What Megasthenes saw was not 
slavery in the Greek sense and hardly in the modern 
sense of the term. The so-called slaves were rare : 
they were merely hereditary house-servants in the 
families of the rich; "their social status was above 
that of hired laborers" : * they were not chattels ; they 
could hold and inherit property like other people.''' 
Considering' the indescribable horrors of the slave- 
system in Greece or Rome, Megasthenes was fully 
justified in declaring that there was no slavery in 
India. 

92 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN INDIA 

That then was one source of her industrial ex- 
cellence. Her toilers were free. 

Labor as Religion. Again, "in India work is 
always regarded as a religious function." Thus 
every artisan "takes that pride and pleasure in his 
work for its own sake which are essential to all 
artistic excellence and perfection. * =i= * It never 
enters into his head to work for merely mercenary 
motives or with any idea of making money. * * * 
It is the sacred duty for which God has created 
him." ^ Somehow the humble Hindu artisan has 
been made to feel dumbly that "Art is man's ex- 
pression of his joy in labor." ^ 

Reverence for the Past. Again, skilled labor de- 
mands a long apprenticeship to routine and prece- 
dents. This also is made easy by the Indian impulse, 
retrospective, averse to change, revering the past 
and clothing custom with a divine authority. This 
clinging to the by-gone and routine doubtless has 
its disadvantages. But it certainly does train the 
human hand to perform wonders. The Hindu 
weaver, for example, uses a loom made of a few 
sticks and bamboo canes fixed in the ground : but 
long years of practice with these preposterous tools 
enables him to weave fabrics — marvels of delicacy 
which no modern machinery can rival. 

The Caste System. But the industrial education 
of India was due, above all else, to her system of 
castes. This institution once so much reviled as 
the sum of all iniquities, is now better understood 
and its true value more appreciated. "Caste," 

93 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

writes a noted jurist,^ " is but a name for trades or 
occupations and the sole tangible result of the 
Brahminical theory was to give a religious sanc- 
tion for what is really a primitive and natural di- 
vision of employments." At a still earlier date, 
Comte pointed out the benefits of caste as a means of 
technical education, "promoting as it does the trans- 
mission of skill, the preservation of inventions, and 
the division of labor." He notes also the honor 
"which the system paid to industrial ability by exalt- 
ing into apotheosis its commemoration of ancient 
inventors who were offered to the adoration of their 
respective castes." ^ 

Its Universal Acceptance. The caste-system 
then is society organized upon an industrial basis. 
As such it has been accepted by the people of India 
with hearty and virtually unanimous favor. Her 
poets seem never weary of declaring that "the con- 
fusion of castes is the gateway of hell." No sect or 
heresy — Buddhist or Jain or Sikh or any other of the 
many religious factions — has ever attempted to dis- 
turb the institution of castes. A high authority de- 
clares that the Hindus do not feel and perhaps never 
have felt their class restrictions as being in any wise 
burdensome or still less a disgrace to them, and the 
lowest man looks upon his caste as a privilege as high 
as that of the Brahman.^" Nay, we are even told 
that "the lower the caste, the more tenacious are its 
members of their own caste-rules, the more pride 
do they take in observing them and the more strict 
are they in enforcing them." ^^ 

Castes as Trade-guilds. In the happier days be- 
94 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN INDIA 

fore India's decadence, the castes were as thorough- 
ly organized as the guilds of Mediaeval Europe. 
They had their presidents, and other officials: and 
these were often summoned by the king for pur- 
poses of consultation or to attend him on his royal 
tours of inspection/" Thus they formed that demo- 
cratic element which pervaded Indian government 
even when it seems on the surface completely abso- 
lutist/^ The castes also supervise the conduct of 
their members, arbitrating even in domestic differ- 
ences between man and wife : they ensure good and 
faithful work, prevent undue competition, protect 
their members and assist the needy ones — in fine, 
inspire all with such a sense of religious fidelity that 
lowly workmen will sufifer death rather than, by 
neglect of duty, bring a stigma upon their caste." 

In thus admiring the caste system, I am not un- 
mindful of its evils. Grand in many respects, it still 
bears that characteristic mark of Indian develop- 
ment — one-sided and excessive emphasis upon the 
impulse of causality or dependence. It based in- 
dustrial organization upon the principle of heredity. 
And thus it placed man under a double bondage — 
first through Karma and then through parental in- 
heritance — under that terrible chain of causality 
which enmeshed the universe. 

But to this we shall return hereafter. In the 
meantime let me quote the opinion of a very com- 
petent observer, long resident in India: "I firmly 
believe caste tO' be a marvellous discovery, a form 
of socialism which through ages has protected hu- 
man society from anarchy and the worst evils of 

95 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

industrial and competitive life: it is an automatic 
poor-law and the strongest form known of trade- 
unions."^^ 

III. Restrictions upon Commerce 

Indian culture, then, exalts labor and depreciates 
wealth : it emphasizes the cause and neglects the 
result. Of course this depreciation of wealth must 
not be taken too absolutely. As the Mahabharata 
wisely affirms of man: 

"One thing alone within him ne'er grows old — 
The thirst for riches and the love of gold." 

Nevertheless, contempt for riches was India's 
ideal, and she came nearer to realizing that ideal 
than ever has any other land. No other moral code 
or social system has ever so educated and stimulated 
labor without engendering the greed of gain. No- 
where else have such multitudes sincerely devoted 
themselves to the ideal of poverty instead of wealth. 
In Indian literature the mildest, most innocent forms 
of acquisitiveness are described as avarice and de- 
nounced as deadly sins. Even the desire of exis- 
tence and the yearning after immortality were often 
stigmatized as the root of all evil. The Hindu poet 
knows of nO' higher title to bestow upon his heroes 
than that of "a despiser of wealth." And the 
Buddhistic literature is even more monotonous than 
the orthodox, in its praise of mendicancy and its 
warnings against the lust for riches. 

96 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN INDIA 

Nor was all this merely theory and sentiment. 
In practical life it almost paralyzed the commercial 
spirit. Aryan India, as we have just seen, was the 
chief workshop of the world; but her wares were 
carried to foreig'n markets by foreigners and the 
aboriginal races. Once great store was set upon the 
fact that the names of the articles brought by King 
Solomon's ships were not Hebrew but Sanskrit. 
But recent researches show that these names were 
not Sanskrit but Dravidian. Indeed, it was a part 
of an orthodox Hindu's religion to stay at home. 
India was holy ground and all other lands unclean; 
to visit them was to run the awful risk of losing- 
one's caste. 

Inland Trade. Even domestic commerce on any 
large scale seems to be mainly in the hands of such 
heretical sects as the Jains^' and more recently the 
Parsees. Not, of course, that orthodoxy prohibits 
trade. But there is in the moral sentiment, the 
ancient institutions and customs of India that which 
weakens if it does not deaden the commercial spirit. 
Let us note some of these causes. 

Restricted Rights of Property. One great barrier 
to the spread of commercialism was the strict limita- 
tion upon property rights. The Indian impulse of 
causality emphasized the common dependence of 
all upon the unseen and upon each other; and so 
believed that economic values were mainly of col- 
lective rather than individual origin. Hence India 
clung to the primitive communistic conceptions. 

Roman law ruled by the opposite impulse — as we 
97 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

shall see — gradually enlarged the rights of the pri- 
vate possessor until it finally gave him complete and 
exclusive ownership. But the Indian intellect, with 
all its dreaming, seems hardly to have dreamed of 
any such relation as a title in fee simple. In India 
the complete ownership of land is lodged with no 
individual; it is divided and floats vaguely about 
between the tillers of the soil, the village community 
and the king.^*^ Thus the tenures of land approach 
ver}^ closely to the feudal tenures of mediaeval 
Europe.^® The holder cannot sell or even mortgage 
his interest without the consent of the village com- 
munity and the purchaser takes it burdened with all 
the original restrictions and obligations."" Such 
conditions plainly were not conducive to^ commerce. 
In fact, we are told that the sale of lands — the trans- 
fer of even the feeble possessory title of the holder — 
was something virtually unknown before the advent 
of British rule. 

There were, of course, exceptions to this — occa- 
sional transfers of gardens, etc. — but the general 
rule holds. "Mother Earth loves not to be sold," 
said the Vedas. 

Wills. Note also that the testamentary disposition 
of property so thoroughly developed in Roman law 
was unknown in India. In Hindu law there is no 
such a thing as a true will. "The individual had no 
full, undivided control of his possessions when he 
was alive, much less when he was dead.*' 

Restraint of Contract. Another barrier to com- 
mercialism was the Hindu aversion to contract or 

98 



SOCIAI, EVOLUTION IN INDIA 

bargaining. In India the power of contract is lim- 
ited on every side : it is limited by the minute archaic 
formalities upon which its validity depends — by the 
counter-claims of the community, the family and 
even the distant kinsmen — by that communal na- 
ture of property which leaves the individual almost 
without a clear and simple title to anything. And 
difficult as it is to make a valid contract it seems 
still more difficult to get one fulfilled. It is said 
to be a quite general practice to disregard all agree- 
ments until performance of them has been decreed 
by a court; the contract seems tO' be considered as 
not completely binding until the civil power has 
interfered to enforce it. 

In other words, India refused to substitute con- 
tract for custom. It was another sign of the causal 
impulse, retrospective, trusting in that moral order 
of the universe which had ordained of old what was 
proper between man and man. Hence India has 
always revered custom as a sure defence against the 
wheedling of the weak by the sly and crafty. Even 
the Indian despot has always had to yield to cus- 
tom ; "he took as his revenue a prodigious share of 
the products of the soil, he levied great armies, he 
executed great numbers of men; but he never made 
a law. He never dreamed or could have dreamed of 
changing the civil rules under which his subjects 
lived." 

Fixed Prices. Closely connected with this an- 
tipathy to contract or bargaining is the Indian in- 
sistence upon stability of prices. Nothing stimu- 

uorc. 99 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

lates the greed of gain so much as the constant 
fluctuation of prices produced by the accidents O'f 
trade or the cunning of traders. But in India be- 
fore the rule of the comniercial Enghsh began, 
prices were determined by immemorial usage. Even 
to this day the native artisan holds his wares at a 
fixed price established by custom ; and it is said that 
he would always rather change the quality of his 
goods than the customary prices. 

Now, doubtless, this characteristic, and the others 
just noted, are all very archaic. And they are not, 
perhaps, economically wise. But equally unwise is 
that wild, unbridled passion for independence and 
gold which makes us blind to what was really good 
and true in the Indian ideal. 

At any rate my thesis is proved. Indian civilisa- 
tion, before it was wrecked by the Mahometan in- 
vasions, had certainly lifted labor to a height un- 
known in any other ancient society. And at the 
same time, in the many ways just enumerated, it had 
scorned wealth. In fine, it had emphasized the cause 
and correspondingly neglected the result. 

Thus India in all the spheres of her life — religion, 
morality, mathematical and physical research, art, 
politics, commerce and industry — has moved on one 
fixed line of development almost as steadily as the 
stars in their courses. That development, especially 
in its earlier ages, led to much that was brilliant 
and noble. Nevertheless it was under the fatal law 
of one-sided, excessive development and consequent 
degeneration. It had no capacity for reform. Its 

JOG 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN INDIA 

inevitable end was torpor, superstition and despot- 
ism. In fine, it developed one side of human nature 
and paralyzed the other. 

And our proof, it seems to me, has followed a 
true scientific method. There has been no arbitrary- 
selection of special facts favoring our theory. Every 
sphere of Indian life has been studied, and the es- 
sential features of each presented. Let then some 
one come forward and show what feature has not 
been simply and clearly explained. 

NOTES 

^ Fa Hien, Buddhistic Kingdoms. 
2 Smith, Early History, India. 
' Megasthenes, Indica. 

* Journal Roy. As. Soc, 1901, p. 867. Economic Conditions in Nor. 

India. 
'^ Hopkins, Religions of India, 88. 

* Monier- Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, 463. 

'' Morris (Architecttire, etc., 175) entitles this "Ruskin's idea, than 

which no more important truth has ever been stated." 
^ Maine, Village Communities, 56-58. 

* Comte, Positive Philosophy, II. ig8. 
1" Enc. Brit., IV. 210. 

^^- Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, 453. 

'^^ Journal Royal Asiatic Soc, 1901. Economic Conditions in Nor. 

India. 
13 Wheeler, History of India, II. So; 160; 653. Great Council consisting 

of "whole body of citizens" at nomination of new Raiah. Mrs. 

Rhys Davids also thinks kings elective in early times, J. R. A. S., 

1901, p. 865. 
^* Hopkins, Religions of India, 479. Note. 
J-^Townsend, Asia and Europe. 
'■>« Mahabharata, XIII. 3676. 
1^ Hunter, History of India, 83. "The Jains are usuaHy merchants or 

bankers." 
18 Elphinstone, History of India, I. 141, seq. 
^9 Tod, Feudal. System in India, J. R. A. S., V. 42. 
2* Maine, Avcicnt Lav:, 256. 



lOI 



BOOK II 



CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION 



CHAPTER I 

CLASSICAL RELIGION 

I. Introductory 

Classical civilisation, in utter contrast to that of 
India, places a one-sided and hence excessive em- 
phasis upon results. Not, of course, that the con- 
cept of causality is categorically denied; but it con- 
stantly tends to fade first into- the idea of a means 
tO' an end and then intO' the idea of a mere ante- 
cedence in a more or less orderly succession of 
events. And so at last nothing seems of much 
significance except the series of sensible results. 

From this point of view, it seems to me, a strictly 
scientific comparison of the Indian and classical 
civilisation becomes possible. They are seen not as 
a confused conflict of vague opinions, but as definite 
movements along one fixed line but in opposite direc- 
tions. And when in each case we find this constant 
direction of the movement revealing itself, not only 
in the several spheres of life — religion, morality, 
science, art and social organisation — but also in the 
different subdivisions within those spheres, it would 
seem as if we had reached an induction almost quan- 
titative in character, or at least one as fully verifiable 
as those of the more complex among the physical 

105 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

sciences. And if so, then the basis for a real science 
of history has been gained. 

Greek Dissent. But one great difficulty must not 
be overlooked. It is the glory of Greece that she 
gave more welcome to dissent and protest than any 
other ancient people. Many Greek thinkers stood 
aloof from the prevailing tendency and the splendor 
of their genius has made their revolts more luminous 
than the ruling system against which they revolted. 
Hence modern criticism, without any adequate 
philosophy of history, has not distinguished between 
the generic and the individual, the dominant trend 
and the protest, the main current and the eddies in 
the stream. Everything has been jumbled together 
as characteristically "Greek." And so our modern 
view of Greek civilisation has become a chaos of 
incongruities and contradictions concerning which 
almost any general proposition may be proved or 
disproved w4th equal ease. 

But this difficulty is overcome the moment we 
thoroughly comprehend it. The main current is too 
strong, too deep, wide and constant not to^ be readily 
distinguishable from the occasional eddies in the 
stream. More than that by carefully distinguishing 
between the two, we hope to throw a new light upon 
the nature of both. 

II. The Finiteness of the Gods 

The very slight hold which the conception of 
causality had upon the Greeks and Romans is clearly 

1 06 



CLASSICAL RELIGION 

shown in their indifference and even antipathy to the 
conception of the Infinite. The thought of a finite 
or Hmited cause immediately drives us back to the 
thought of that which Hmits it. The mind can- 
not rest until it reaches the thought of that which 
is limited by nothing else. We may familiarly speak 
of finite things as causes; but they are really but 
factors in a causal process; a true, full cause in 
the strict sense of the term, must be infinite. 

But the -Greek and Roman conception of causality 
was altogether too feeble to foster this conviction of 
infinitude. And therefore the Greek gods are ir- 
remediably finite. They are not omniscient although 
they know much ; they are not omnipotent although 
they have great power : they are not omnipresent but 
can move swiftly like the light. Even their im- 
mortality is limited and finally comes to an end. 
Their moral finiteness is still more conspicuous; 
they are sensual, jealous, meddlesome, sometimes 
malignant and all too often liars. 

With the Roman deities the case was still worse. 
The genius of Greece threw a wondrous veil ol 
beauty around the personified abstractions which 
were worshipped as divine. But at Rome we see 
these abstractions in all their crude simplicity. 
There, any common noun or adjective might 
achieve apotheosis; and thus there came to be, for 
instance, gods of foul air, fever and even theft.* No 
product of the generalizing process was too trivial 
or too sordid to be denied admission into the Roman 
pantheon. 

107 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

It is true that India also adored many very finite 
g-ods. But with this difference. Underneath the 
Indian polytheism as its basis, and above it as the 
over-arching sky, was the conception of the Infinite. 
Even the meaner forms of the popular religion were 
subtly permeated with this conception : and among 
the more thoughtful classes it seems to have been 
almost the sum and substance of faith. 

Pythagoras. But among Greek thinkers in the 
classical era the case was very different. In their 
speculations the conception of the infinite was under 
a sort of ostracism. Pythagoras affords a very nota- 
ble instance of this peculiarity. He had travelled 
far and in some way come in close communication 
with the religion and philosophy of India, whence he 
borrowed many of the main features of his own sys- 
tem. But the great central conception around which 
Indian thought revolved had no attractions for him : 
and so in the famous Pythag-orean tables of opposites 
we find "the finite" listed among the good, and "the 
infinite'' listed among the evil and undesirable things. 
As we shall see, Pythagoras was the earliest and, if 
we except Plato, the most renowned of those dis- 
senters who strove to reform Greek life by introduc- 
ing Oriental idealism; and yet he rejects the very 
soul of that system. 

Alexandrian Philosophy. Eight centuries after 
Pythagoras, Indian philosophy in all its fullness 
came pouring like a flood into the West through the 
gateway of Alexandria. Of this great movement 
Plotinus was the worthy leader. And a very em- 

io8 



CLASSICAL RELIGION 

inent authority has declared it to be "one of the most 
important points wherein Plotinus differed not only 
from Plato but also from almost the whole of Gre- 
cian antiquity. * '^ * He has ascribed to the idea 
of infinity which even Philo feared to adopt, all that 
is best."^ 

In the third century after Christ, then, Plotinus 
ventures to introduce the conception of the infinite 
into Greek philosophy. But Plotinus is simply the 
representative of Greek thought in its decrepitude, 
leaning upon the broken staff of Hindu mysticism. 

HI. The Classical Viezu of Sacrifice 

We have already seen that in the Vedic view sacri- 
fice had a strange, an almost weird and ineffable 
significance. Sacrifice was the principle upon which 
the cosmic order depended. Nay, more than that, 
the creation oi the universe was an act of self sacri- 
fice on the part of the Infinite. 

But the Greeks and Romans had no such vision 
of earthly sacrifice as a mere image of the heavenly. 
They saw only the earthly offering made by human 
hands and valued it only for its earthly results. For 
them sacrifice was simply a commercial transaction, 
a bargaining with the gods. The Romans especially 
expressed this sordid mercantile view with their cus- 
tomary bluntness. They even thought it possible 
occasionally to over-reach a benignant deity; "and 
the human debtor always availed himself of such an 
opportunity to outwit his celestial creditor." ^ On 

109 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

the other hand, it was necessary for the worshipper 
to avoid any mistakes in form which might enable 
the god to evade his part of the contract/ 

Religion and Politics. If in private Hfe Roman 
reUgion was so thoroughly commercial, much more 
was it so in public life. Every student knows how 
completely religion at Rome was made subservient 
to politics. Its solemn rites, auguries, sacrifices and 
festal days were but so much machinery wherewith 
the senate ruled the city. Indeed one writer has 
maintained that the Greeks were less successful than 
the Romans in political life because they were more 
religious. The Romans were troubled by no' pious 
scruples; they reduced the sacred augurs into mere 
secret agents working for the magistrates and the 
senate. In fine, they never permitted their religion 
to hinder their "statesmanship." ® 

And there is undoubtedly much truth in this con- 
trast of Greece with Rome. The close contact of 
the Greeks with the Orient could not but have in- 
fluenced their religion, as we shall find it did their 
art and philosophy. Their piety was not all utili- 
tarian — a mere balancing of profit and loss, a com- 
putation of results. What gives such majesty to the 
dramas of Aeschylus, for example, is a deep Oriental 
instinct for dependence : he paints every passion as 
but "a link in the great chain of causes forged by 
the inexorable will of Zeus." *"' Listen to Cassan- 
dra's song concerning the curse that clung to the 
race of Atreus : then contrast it with Seneca's boast 
that a Stoic sage was superior to God because he 

no 



Classical religion 

owed his virtue only to his own efforts. The one 
seems an echo from the Indian faith in Karma : the 
other is the mad cry of a soul from which all sense 
of human dependence has fled. 

Anti-sacerdotalism. With a wise economic in- 
stinct, the Greeks and Romans were not anxious for 
intermediaries in their commerce with heaven : "they 
who had business with a god resorted to the god 
and not to a priest." For the public sacrifices, in- 
deed, priests were necessary but their duties were 
merely ritualistic '^ and in their most important parts 
were shared by magistrates and private citizens.^ 
The priest was but a minor functionary of the state, 
elected or appointed like other officials, generally 
holding his office not for life but for a term of years 
and often only for a single year.^ His position im- 
parted to him no special dignity, much less made 
him an object of reverence : he was often consulted 
as a sooth-sayer or fortune-teller but rarely as an 
authority in theology or morals. Such slight rever- 
ence as Greece had for intellectual authority was re- 
served for her poets and philosophers; her priests 
were little more than janitors in her temples. 

Thus, under classic utilitarianism, religioii with 
its priests, sacrifices and sacred traditions had been 
reduced to a minor branch of politics. 

IV. Hopefulness 

The trend of Indian thought was towards ex- 
planation ; always seeking for causes, it looked back- 

III 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

ward, was retrospective. Classical thought on the 
contrary was predictive : it looked forward for re- 
sults, valued causes merely as means to some end — 
as antecedents in a series, acquaintance with which 
led to a knowledge of the future. This antithesis 
between explanation and prediction is just now play- 
ing an important part in philosophic discussion, and 
I trust that much light will be thrown upon it in our 
survey of the scientific movement in the different 
epochs of civilisation. But here I use it only in 
reference to religion. 

Oracles, etc. Probably no one will deny that 
divination was the most conspicuous and persistent 
factor in classical religion. Even the Orientals ac- 
knowledged the supremacy of the Greeks in this 
sphere; great monarchs like Croesus sent embassies 
to learn the secrets of the future from the Delphic 
oracles. And the Hindu astronomers acknowledged 
that the Greeks had been their teachers in some re- 
spects; but upon closer inspection it appears that 
these Greek improvements upon Indian science were 
mainly astrological.^^ So essentially predictive was 
the bent of Greek genius. And so in the dark days 
when everything else had decayed, faith in the ora- 
cles still flourished. In another way this persistence 
of the predictive element shows the engrossment of 
classic religion with practical results; in a recently 
discovered inscription, the citizens of a little town 
are enjoined to- take the utmost care of the sacred 
place, "on account of the great gain derived from 

112 



CLASSICAL RELIGION 

the strangers who came to consult the oracle." " 
And where there were no oracles, even dreams would 
suffice to unveil futurity. In obedience to a dream 
the Emperor Augustus went begging through the 
streets of Rome.^^ In fine, as a French historian has 
well said, "the religion of the Romans was essen- 
tially an art — the art of discovering the designs of 
the gods." '^ 

Optimism. But the art of prediction, to succeed, 
must be optimistic ; human nature soon tires of Cas- 
sandras. Of late, however, writers have criticised 
the common opinion which has long ascribed tO' clas- 
sical character a high degree of hopefulness. But 
these critics it seems to me, overlook the well-known 
fact that the sanguine temperament above all others 
is peculiarly liable to fits of extreme depression. It 
would be surprising then if even in a literature so 
serene and buoyant as that of Greece we did not find 
now and then what savors of melancholy or even of 
pessimism. The Greeks were not oxen always chew- 
ing the cud of contentment. They saw the darker 
side of life, its pain, disappointments and inevitable 
doom. But among the best Greeks hopefulness cer- 
tainly predominated. Of the Athenians for example, 
even their enemies said that "they kept their hopes 
alive in desperate circumstances : if they failed in one 
enterprise their hopes rose anew in some other di- 
rection." Rome also was very optimistic; hu- 
miliated and crushed, as in the Punic wars, she did 
not despair. And the chief charm of her literature, 

113 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

as Virgil illustrates ^* was this radiant confidence in 
her own golden future. She seems to have even 
communicated something of this spirit to the crushed 
and fallen nations around her so that at the opening 
of the Christian era a hush of expectancy had become 
the dominant note of all Western life. 

Hopefulness is a charming grace. But a religion 
which consists of expectancy alone is very much 
like an inverted pyramid. And classic religion by 
surrendering all belief in the infinite, the causal and 
self-sacrificing, had narrowed its base almost to a 
point. "In Homer sacrifice is but, as it were, the 
signal for a banquet of abundant roast flesh and 
sweet wine ; we hear nothing of fasting, of cleansing 
and atonement." Later the gist of religion accord- 
ing to Thucydides was recreation. He makes Peri- 
cles say : Moreover we have provided for our spirit 
very many opportunities for recreation by the cele- 
bration of games and sacrifices throughout the 
year.^^ 

That would seem abasement enough. But in the 
next century religion sinks far lower. "The old 
simplicity of dedication is quite gone. * * * The 
victors no long-er dedicate their offerings out of pure 
thankfulness of heart. The inscriptions with their 
long list of distinctions and their carven wreaths, 
become a means of advertisement or self-glorifica- 
tion. ''' * * We see the old simplicity and devotion 
being gradually overlaid with ostentation and show 
until nothing else remains." ^*' 

Advertisement and self-glorification. What could 
114 



CLASSICAL RELIGION 



more fully express the natural outcome of the classi- 
cal engrossment with the results of religion? 



NOTES 

* Mommsen, History, Rome, I. 355. "Sank to a singularly low level ot 

conception and of insight." 

2 Ritter, Hist. Ancient Philosophy, IV. 563. 

3 Inge, Society in Rome, 2. 

* Mommsen, History of Rome, I. 225. 

" Prof. Howard quoted by Willoughby, Political Theories of Ancient 
World, p. 230. Note. 

* Lecky, Hist. European Morals. 
'' Lobeck, Agloaphamus, II. 259. 

8 Welcker, Griechische, Gotteslehre, III. 3S- 

^ Pausanias, IV. 33, 8, and Athenaeus, XII. 13. "Plato voulut que les 
pretres changaasent chaque annee." Brouwer, Civilisation des Grecs. 

10 Weber, Hist. Indian Literature, 255. The other improvement was 
the division of the Zodiac into signs, degrees, etc. And exactitude 
we shall find to be the Greek contribution to science. 

1^ Mahaffy, Silver Age of the Greek World, 369. 

12 Suetonius. Aug, XCL 

1* Pressense, Hist, de trois premiers Siecles, I. 192. 

1* Eel, IV. Also Georgics, I. 20. 

^^ Harrison, Prolegomena, Greek Religion, 1-2. 

1* Rouse, Greek Votive Ofterings, 184-5. Also p. 351. 



IIS 



CHAPTER II 

CLASSICAL MORALITY 

I. The Basis of Morality 

Probably no one will deny that the dominant note 
of Greek and Roman ethics is utilitarian. All the 
ethical schools bow before the Socratic principle that 
virtue is knowledge. To be virtuous is to have a 
correct appreciation of the consequences of conduct. 
Here then in the wide field of ethics the classical ten- 
dency is, incontrovertibly engrossment with results. 

With this emphasis upon moral results, there went 
also a corresponding neglect of the cause or ground 
of moral obligation. For this, the supreme question 
in morals, classic antiquity had virtually no answer, 
but contented itself with vague assertions and rhet- 
oric. My proof is as follows: 

The Moral order of the World. It is the glory of 
India, as we have seen, that amid all her errors and 
failures, she somehow managed to hold fast to her 
faith in the moral order of the world. Far back 
in Vedic times she had indeed lost the chief jewel 
in that faith ; and she had distorted the rest into her 
strange theory of transmigration. But still she kept 
her faith in an Infinite Cause that renders equal 

ii6 



CLASSICAL MORALITY 

and exact justice to all the sons and daughters of 
men. Even Buddha in his curiously subtile way 
clings to this faith in the Moral Order ; and for that 
reason they will never understand him, who count 
him as an atheist. 

But the Greeks and Romans, with their feeble 
sense of causality, could not keep this faith, this 
true ground of all moral obligation. Engrossed 
with results they saw much in human experience 
that seemed to contradict the belief in any moral 
government of the world. In the place of this be- 
lief, they put their monstrous conception of the 
Divine Envy. "The gods were jealous of man in 
whom they saw a dangerous rival. * * * They were 
envious even of the perfect happiness of man and 
wife.'"' ^ The benefactors of mankind were also 
among the victims of divine jealousy. This horrible 
view was advanced not only by Homer but by Hero- 
dotus, Pindar and many others.^ It is indeed a 
natural outgrowth of that aversion to the infinite, 
that idea of the finiteness of the Divine which per- 
vades all classical theology. 

Even when the Greeks tried to save the righteous- 
ness of the gods, they seemed only to make matters 
worse. Thus Aeschylus lays great stress upon the 
doctrine of the inherited curse descending from gen- 
eration to generation. There seems in that some 
faint analogy to the Indian chain of moral causation ; 
but in reality one main motif of the latter doctrine 
is to get rid of the injustice involved in the punish- 
ment of the guilty falling upon their innocent de- 

ii; 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

scendants. So much the Indian writers expressly 
state. "A father, a mother, a son," says the Ramay- 
ana, "whether in this world or the next eats only the 
fruit of his own works. * * * Each of these by his 
own actions gives birth to good or evil." 

Here then we have the great polar contrast be- 
tween Indian and Greek ethics. India believes in 
the moral government of the world, puts that doc- 
trine indeed in strange forms but still makes it the 
basis of all her thoughts and life. The Greeks and 
the Romans reject or doubt that doctrine; experi- 
ence, they say, is against it. 

Orphic and Platonic Ethics. Some critics, how- 
ever, insist that a marked improvement in this re- 
spect was introduced into classical morality by the 
Orphic rites and the philosophic reformers. Their 
work I shall consider in a subsequent chapter on the 
Greek Protest. Here it is enough tO' point out suc- 
cinctly my proofs that neither of these agencies had 
any really reformatory influence on classical 
ethics. 

In regard to Orphism note first, that it did not 
even pretend to have any logical or rational basis; 
its faith was confessedly the wild product of drunk- 
enness or hysteria. To the Hindu mind on the con- 
trary, the moral order, the causal chain of Karma is 
the first principle, the postulate from which all else 
is logically deduced. Secondly, Orphic righteous- 
ness was wholly ceremonial : purity was gained by 
mere forms of initiation and magic; it was even 
hawked about the streets in the shape of indui- 
ng 



CLASSICAL MORALITY 

gences.* Such things naturally disgusted Greek 
common-sense and even such philosophic radicals as 
Plato. ^ Thirdly, the real aim of Orphism was es- 
chatological instead of ethical ; it was a vain attempt 
to galvanize the dead or dying hope of immortality. 

Concerning PlatO' I note here but a single fact, 
one however that seems to me entirely decisive. In 
the Laws Plato promulgates in very definite and pre- 
cise terms, the doctrine of an evil world-soul.® This 
says Zeller contradicts the spirit of his whole theory. 
But that is a mistake. True, Plato in his earlier 
writings speaks with more reserve ; but the most that 
his ardent admirers can claim is that "it would be 
difficult to say whether Plato does or does not as- 
sume a principle of evil in the world co-ordinate 
with the principle of good. At any rate, they claim, 
he makes the good principle "far the more promin- 
ent in his writings." "^ 

This confessed dubiety is enough for my purpose. 
Plato was the greatest and wisest of all the dissenters 
from the ruling tendency of Greek thought and life; 
profoundly imbued with Oriental ideas he wished 
therewith to revolutionize Greek orthodox5^ But 
there were three insuperable obstacles preventing 
his return to that primitive faith in the moral order 
which India still retained. First, the idea of the 
Infinite repelled him as it did Pythagoras and the 
Greeks in general. Second, the idea of cause had 
faded into that of means to an end; thus it was 
vaguer than even Hume's idea of sequence for it 
lacked the scientific insight into invariability. 

119 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

Third, the primitive view of divine sacrifice had been 
degraded into that of a bargaining with the gods. 
But these three — the Infinite, causahty and self-sacri- 
fice — I have proved are all essential to faith in the 
moral order of the world; and when the former 
had crumbled, it was impossible to retain the latter. 
Hence Plato — a true Greek despite his Oriental 
proclivities — doubted. And since then belief in the 
moral order of the world has remained a matter of 
faith or tradition. In this volume, I believe, it has 
been fully demonstrated — not indeed from the con- 
flicting facts of experience — but as a simple and evi- 
dent corollary from the nature of thought. 

II. The Standard of Morality 

But we must not be understood as affirming that 
classical morality was utterly baseless. Let it be 
remembered that we have defined beauty as the dim 
revelation to feeling of a causality which has not. 
been fully and clearly disclosed to exact thought. 
And this artistic recognition has been especially in- 
fluential in the realm of morality. In all ages men 
have felt that virtue was beautiful and vice ugly. 
They have seen in righteousness and self-sacrifice 
the dim revelation of an Infinite will — a divine order 
governing the universe. And so in no age, savage 
or civilized, has morality ever been left without some 
basis, at least in the emotions of mankind. 

And the Greeks, as the most artistic of all races, 
interwove this aesthetic element into their ethics with 

120 



CLASSICAL MORALITY 

an incomparable skill. They invested the moral life 
with all the radiance of a Fine Art. 

Now undoubtedly there were some advantages 
gained through this blending of the good and the 
beautiful, especially among a people of so artistic a 
temperament as the Greeks. Still these benefits seem 
to me far out- weighed by the evils wrought through 
this identifying of categories sO' diverse as the good 
and the beautiful. 

The difference between the two categories is cer- 
tainly very great. The function of art, as we have 
seen, is to give dim intimations which appeal to the 
imagination. But the function of morality is to pro- 
claim clear, decisive commands addressed to- the will. 
And, therefore, the fatal tendency of artistic morality 
is to dissipate itself in exalted emotions instead of 
realizing itself in act. As light is beautified by dis- 
solving itself into colors but at the same time is ob- 
scured, so the conviction of duty may be beautified 
by art, but it is also' dimmed and weakened. 

Among many proofs I select one that throws a 
glaring light upon my argument. The blackest blot 
upon the fame of Greece is the crime against nature. 
It first appears after the Homeric age, perhaps about 
630 B.C., and continues throughout the whole Greek 
literature. Fathers assented to it in the case of their 
own sons. In Sparta and Thebes the vice was es- 
teemed as making the lover desirous to^ perform 
brave deeds. In Athens it was licensed as a ready 
means of increasing the public revenue.® 

"Philosophic ethics took but little notice of this 
121 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

feature of Greek life. The attitude of Epicurus 
seems to be one of assent. "^ ''' ''' Tlie early Stoics do 
not condemn it : neither do the minor Socratics. "^ "i" * 
Socrates opposed it but his reason is significant. It 
causes expense and trouble, he says, while it turns 
a man into a slave. Plato is ready to pardon it, but 
it only needs pardon because it is concerned with 
the body and marks a falling away from spiritual 
love. ^' * * PlatO' saw around him a lack of pas- 
sionate devotion, and wanted to remedy the defect. 
So wide-spread was the crime against nature that he 
thought he saw in it the only means to accomplish 
his aim." ® 

Now manifestly this infamy had its origin in a 
diseased sestheticism, a morbid passion for youthful 
beauty. That then is the first count in the indict- 
ment against the artistic morality of the Greeks. 

A second count is that all emotionalism is neces- 
sarily evanescent. In a while it bursts forth like 
a flame, then it vanishes. It has no stomach for 
that hard, ceaseless fight which duty has to wage 
against the myriad temptations of life. The whole 
fate of Greek patriotism, for example, is explained 
by this ephemeral character of emotionalism. The 
Greek sentiment of national unity was the product 
of art and imagination, the songs of Homer, the 
beauty of festivals and Olympic games. This poetic 
sentiment could hold the Greeks together under the 
stimulus of some sublime event such as the war 
against the Persians; but like all processes of the 
imagination, it was an inconstant force: it did not 

122 



CLASSICAL MORALITY 

exert a continuous pressure stifling the jealousies 
and bickerings of the clans and binding them into a 
permanent political unity. 

Another case in point is that notorious excitabil- 
ity, fickleness and unrest, that feverish thirst for 
something new which characterized the Athenians. 
As one of their poets declared : "He who had been 
absent from Athens for three months was unable to 
recognise it on his return." ^" 

In philosophic ethics also we find new proof of 
this volatility of all artistic morality. Plato, for in- 
stance, began by discovering that the ethical principle 
consisted in the contemplation of that supreme idea 
of "the Good" that sat enthroned above the other 
archetypal ideas of the universe. But this poetic per- 
sonifying of mere abstractions did not fully satisfy 
even himself, and so like a true Greek he falls back 
upon another artistic conception of virtue as the har- 
mony of the soul. Everything in the life of the 
moral man from infancy to old age is to be music. 
But what average man could endure music all the 
time ? 

Stoicism. Recent moralists have been inclined to 
discredit that sharp-drawn antithesis between Epi- 
curean and Stoic ethics which for centuries had been 
regarded as self-evident. Wundt finds a close kin- 
ship between these two rival schools ; "a certain sim- 
ilarity is noticeable in their fundamental views." ^^ 
And the best English historian of ethics says more 
bluntly that the two sects merely made rival offers 
to the world of the same kind of happiness. ^^ Grant- 

123 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

ing all that I nevertheless see between the two sects a 
gulf very wide and deep. The Epicureans were fully 
conscious that the basis of the old Greek morality had 
crumbled; they accepted this fact cheerfully, nay, 
gladly ; the intuitions of Socrates, the enthroned 
"ideas" and musical metaphors of Plato, the "golden 
mean" of Aristotle — were but the dreams of the 
artistic imagination ; let them go : the true corner- 
stone of ethics is a refined, far-sighted egoism. The 
Stoics, too, were conscious of this ethical collapse: 
they knew that the old artistic morality of the Greeks 
was logically indefensible. But they scouted at logic 
"as a false guide leading only to pernicious subtle- 
ties." '^-^ With logic or without it they would not 
surrender unconditionally to the egoism of a deca- 
dent age. So they thought; and what is better, so 
they mainly lived. 

Of course this way of thinking led the Stoics into 
a host of inconsistencies and paradoxes. But it 
seems to me a low, silly criticism which flouts at them 
on this account. As we shall see hereafter, we are 
to-day living in an ethical atmosphere very much 
like that of imperial Rome. Take then one of our 
typical American millionaires, vulgar, sordid and 
pietistic. Compare him with Seneca, a millionaire 
too, but also a man ol marvellous genius — a man 
that lived serenely, not like Diogenes in a tub, but in 
a den oi wild beasts — a man whose winged words 
after nineteen centuries are still flying around the 
world. ^^ 

Among the nobler Stoics too I find some gleam 
124 



CLASSICAL MORALITY 

of that primeval faith in the Infinite, self-sacrificing- 
Cause which is the only true basis of morality. The 
essence of God is "goodness," said Epictetus, for ex- 
ample, "He has given us all good that could be 
given — a part of Himself." ^^ 

But such archaic, sacrificial conceptions had nO' in- 
fluence. They seemed to the Greeks and Romans in 
general, as they do to most moderns — tO' be mere 
paradoxes and "hollow declamation." And neces- 
sarily SO, For, the classic indifference tO' causality 
and engrossment with sensible results led logically 
to a utilitarian ethics. And Avhen the thin artistic 
drapery woven by poetic philosophers had fallen 
away, classic morality stood forth as simple egoism, 
disrobed but unashamed. 

NOTES 

I Odyssey, XXIIT. 210-12. 

- Butcher, Some Aspects of the Greek Genius, 105 seq 

* Harrison (Prolegomena, Greek Religion, 478) claims for Orphism 

more than ceremonial purification; but in the whole book I can 

find no proof thereof. 
"= Ibid, 5 1 7-8. 

" Jones, Greek Morality, 23. 
■^ Nettleship, Republic of Plato, 87. 

* Brouwer, Hist, de la Civilisation des Grecs, II. 246-7. 

* Jones, Greek Morality, 120-1. 

1° Curtius, History of Greece, IV. 72. 

II Wundt, Ethics, II. 26 and 28. "The good for them is flie useful." 
12 Sidgwick. Enc. Brit., VIII. 585. 

^2 a Ritter, Hist. Ancient Philosophy, IV. 179 seq. and 19Q seq. 

^* Dill {Roman Society, from Nero to Marcus Aurelhis, 295) defends 

Seneca well, but with too much stress on his declaiming power. 

Seneca had deeper merit than that. 
1* Diss, I. 14. 



125 



CHAPTER III 

GREEK SCIENCE 

I. The Classical Period 

Theory of Scientific Development. In our survey 
of Indian science, we outlined our theory that suc- 
cess in physical research depended upon two^ condi- 
tions ; first, search for unchanging causal processes ; 
second, rigid verifying of these processes through 
observation of their results. We explained India's 
great triumph in founding the mathematical sciences 
as due to the fact that mathematical processes being 
abstract have no need of external verification. But 
she made no great progress in physical science be- 
cause while eager to discover the secret processes of 
Nature, she neglected tO' verify her supposed dis- 
coveries by exact observation of results. 

Greece, I now wish tO' show, also failed but for 
exactly the opposite reason. The Greek was critical, 
insisted strenuously upon proof, was an exact ob- 
server of sensible things. But on the other hand, 
his sense of causality was feeble and defective ; there- 
fore he never recognised the strict invariability of 
causal processes. He saw only a considerable de- 

126 



GREEK SCIENCE 

gree of uniformity mixed with a great deal of irregu- 
larity and fortuitousness. 

Now the first of these two assertions, the critical, 
verifying spirit of the Greek, is a mere common- 
place. But the second I must prove carefully; for 
it does not chime with the loose talk of our modern 
historians of Greek thought and speculation. 

Aristotle. And for this proof let us gO' to Aris- 
totle, both because he was confessedly the creator 
and chief master of Greek logic and because he pur- 
sued practical physical research with more success 
than any other thinker of the classic period. Aris- 
totle was an indefatigable and exact observer, always 
loyal to his principle that we "must collect the facts 
and provide as large a number of them as possible." 
He was likewise preternaturally quick in the discern- 
ment of differences, the prince of analysts. Further- 
more, the founders of modern science generally la- 
bored in poverty and amidst a hostile environment; 
but Aristotle, as the tutor and friend of Alexander, 
brought the resources of a mighty empire to the aid 
of his studies. 

And he did good work in the classifying of 
species belonging to the organic realm. But remem- 
ber what has been already pointed out in our intro- 
ductory chaper, that in the study of organic species 
the processes of production are visibly presented be- 
fore the observer. Process and product are both 
equally well known, and the one serves as the test of 
the other. But in order to pass from species to gen- 
era, etc., there was required a deeper and fuller 

127 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

knowledge of the processes of production which the 
ancient observer did not possess. And, therefore, 
Aristotle advances not a step; he has hardly a 
glimpse of anything like a systematic classification 
of plants and animals into genera and still higher 
divisions. 

But in the inorganic realm the processes of pro- 
duction are entirely hidden from mere observation; 
they are mysteries which even now science is just 
beginning to unveil. And here Aristotle like the 
Greeks in general went hopelessly astray. Every- 
thing was explained by the empty phrase "occult 
quality" ; the stone fell because it had within it an 
occult quality of heaviness, the smoke rose be- 
cause it had the quality of "levity." But plainly 
these are but identical propositions, they ex- 
plain nothing. More than that, they fatally mis- 
lead; they conceal and virtually deny the real 
unity of the process, from which both the fall 
of the stone and the rise of the smoke result. Some 
historians of science — Whewell, for example — have 
ascribed these puerilities on the part of Aristotle and 
other Greek inquirers tO' their overlooking the am- 
biguity of words. But the Greeks were wonder- 
fully quick to detect ambiguous speech whenever they 
desired to do so. The real reason lies much deeper 
than that; it lies, as I shall now try to show, in a 
radical, incurable defect in the Greek theory of in- 
duction. 

Aristotlean Induction. The logic of Aristotle and 
the Greeks knew of induction only as a mere enum- 

128 



GREEK SCIENCE 

eration of particulars.^ Many critics have doubted 
this and have tried to distort the plain, unmistake- 
able language of the Analytics into some conformity 
with the stricter views of modern science.^ But 
they might have spared all their subtleties and special 
pleading, if they had recognised that the Greek view 
of nature absolutely precluded all but this vulgar 
view of induction. To that view the processes of 
Nature were not invariable but on the contrary a 
wild mixture of uniformity and irregularity. They 
even imagined that this mixture was exhibited in 
different degrees in different localities. In the 
heavens, Aristotle claimed, all was orderly and uni- 
form except in a few cases like that of the "wan- 
dering" of the planets. But on earth events were 
largely fortuitous and the course of Nature very ir- 
regular and capricious.* To him the natural is 
always that which happens, "generally, or for the 
most part." From such a point of view his theory 
of induction is philosophic and valid; the enumer- 
ation of particulars within even a narrow range of 
observation gave at least as much uniformity as 
actually existed in Nature. And with this the 
world's most consummate logician was naturally 
content.^ 

That then is the reason why Aristotle, the law- 
giver of ancient logic, never rose above the vulgar, 
unscientific view of induction. He did not believe 
that the processes of nature were invariable. He 
says that nature — like the artist — often fails to 
achieve her aims.*' She makes mistakes, monstrous 

129 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

and abortive forms. Plants are imperfect crea- 
tures ' : SO' are some species of animals, the moles for 
instance.*^ Everywhere beneath the moon chance 
and accident play a very prominent and possibly 
the chief part. 

Universals. Aristotle's famous doctrine of uni- 
versals or general ideas can only be explained satis- 
factorily in the same way. He denies Plato's doc- 
trine of the "Ideas" as existing apart from things 
but insists that they exist in things. But here both 
these imperial thinkers have gone astray. The uni- 
versal, the "Idea," the concept, in its true or inten- 
sive meaning is but a symbol for the invariable pro- 
cess of production. To use our old example the fall 
of a stone is the product of an unchanging causal 
process in which a countless host of factors enter. 
The product may vary as different factors enter into 
the process; but the process itself never changes, 
always conforms to one mathematical formula. The 
universal, then — the "heaviness" of the stone, for 
instance — is neither in nor outside the thing. Both 
Aristotle and Plato err in ignoring the causal pro- 
cess and substituting for it some mystic entity or 
thing spatially related to other things. And over 
their rival but connate errors, hundreds of philoso- 
phers are still disputing. 

Induction and Greek Idealism. Plato, however, 
placed more stress than Aristotle did upon the ele- 
ment of invariability in concepts. He had learned 
much from the Pythagoreans who in their turn had 
imbibed something of India's faith in the rigid causal 

130 



GREEK SCIENCE 

connexion and mathematical relations of things. 
Thus the idealistic thinkers of classic Greece had 
gained at least an inkling of the true scientific 
method. The Platonic conviction concerning 
the mathematical laws of nature, as Whe- 
well rightly says/ ''has continued through all 
ages to be the animating and supporting 
principle of scientific investigation." Similarly 
Bacon declares" that "the Pythagorean doc- 
trine of numbers goes deep into the elementary prin- 
ciples of natiire." Guided by this Oriental empha- 
sis upon invariable or mathematical processes of 
causation, the Pythagoreans gained, at least, an ap- 
proximately true conception of the astronomic uni- 
verse; they also founded the first medical school 
in Europe and started the study of botany : and ' 'in 
the study of acoustics they made the only genuine ad- 
vance gained in any department of physics before 
the Alexandrian era.^^ 

But these idealizing theorists stood aloof from the 
dominant thought of Greece and their influence upon 
it was neither strong nor lasting. Furthermore, 
they themselves had but a dim insight into these alien 
Indian speculations. The Pythagorean doctrine of 
numbers is so mystical as to be almost unintelligible. 
Of what account were "the mathematical laws of na- 
ture" to a people like the Greeks who with their 
imperfect system of notation had to work out all dif- 
ficult arithmetical problems geometrically ? ^~ Finally, 
Plato like Aristotle limits the invariability of natural 
processes to the heavens, deems any certain knowl- 

131 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

edge of earthly phenomena to be impossible and re- 
gards the study of them as at best but "a harmless 
pastime." ^^ 

II, The Alexandrian Period 

We have seen that the development of physical 
science is made possible only by a certain balance 
between the two contrasted but still complementary 
impulses of the human spirit. On the one side 
there must be an emphasis upon causality like that 
for example which led all India to^ believe that the 
characteristics and the vicissitudes of each individ- 
ual life were the product of an unchanging process 
of causation that led back to- the very beginning of 
time. On the other side there must be that critical 
tendency tO' observation of results and demand for 
proof which the Greeks had in plenty. By this law 
we have explained why India triumphed in mathe- 
matics where verifying was not needed. And why 
Greece at the climax of her genius and culture 
achieved nothing in science-— except, perhaps, some 
dim and fruitless forecasts. 

But at last, long after the decadence of Greece had 
begun the two complementary impulses seemed for a 
brief period to meet in equilibrium. Alexandria 
standing at the very gateway of the East was the 
natural focus of the Oriental influences that came 
streaming upon the West : and thus in her schools the 
two tendencies of the human spirit commingled. 
Hence the indispensable condition was fulfilled for 
that scientific progress which has given such lustre 

132 



GREEK SCIENCE 

to Alexandria. There men of science appeared for 
the first time as a class distinct from the philoso- 
phers ; there the investigation of nature began to as- 
sume something of its modern form. 

It is impossible tO' speak here of the great names 
belonging to that age or of their discoveries. Suf- 
fice it that they seem all tO' have been deeply imbued 
with the Platonic or Oriental conceptions and yet 
masters in the Greek method of exact analysis and 
patient observation. Even Lange concedes that 
there was something more than a casual connexion 
between idealism and science at Alexandria.^* 

But this scientific movement soon reached its im- 
passable limits. The classical spirit was everywhere 
in a state of decrepitude and especially so- in a city 
like Alexandria set in an Oriental environment. As 
the Greek impulse waned, the Oriental grew stronger 
and wilder. At Alexandria men of science gave way 
to Neo-Pythagorean and Neo-Platonic mystics who 
despised everything physical, substituted ecstasy for 
observation and valued nothing except delirious 
dreams concerning the Infinite and its emanations. 
Even Plotinus, the least irrational of them all, main- 
tained that true science required no verification from 
without and no demonstration.^^ 

Rome and Science. Among the Romans of this 
period antipathy to science seems to have been an 
instinct. The loftiest minds were without any de- 
sire of knowledge for its own sake or any hope of 
attaining it.^^ Cicero regards even geometry as 
doubtful and questions the value of anatomy.^^ 

133 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

Seneca maintains, almost as an axiom, that physics 
can reach to nothing beyond the merely probable/* 
Marcus Aurelius formally censures all researches 
into natural objects since thus man forgets to be 
alone with himself and to be devoted to his inner 
demon /^ 

In fine, the brief almost meteoric career of classical 
science had closed and that of Egyptian theosophy 
began. "Egypt which in classic times had been held 
as the stronghold of bestial superstition was now 
spoken of as a "Holy Land," and "the temple of the 
universe."'" 

NOTES 

1 Whewell, Hist. Inductive Sciences, I. 88-92, after much wandering 

finally stumbles upon my doctrine. Aristotle failed, he says, "be- 
cause he did not refer the facts to their appropriate Idea, namely 
Force, the Cause of motion" (p. 90). 

2 Analyt. Poet, I. 32, 5. Analyt. Prior, II. 25. 

* Sigwart, Logic. 

* De Coelo, II. 5, i. 

^ The Arabian commentators interpreted the Aristotlean Induction as 
being a mere enumeration of particulars. Consult on this, Asch 
Schahrstani, Religions-partheien, II. 226. 

« Phys, II. 8. 

'^ de Plant, I. i. 

8 Hist. An., N. 8. 

8 Whewell, Hist. Inductive Sciences. 

10 Bacon, Works, I. 467. 

11 Matter, Hist, de I'Ecole d'Alexandrie, II. 127. 

12 Ritchie, Plato, 49. ' ' ■ 

13 Tiniaeus, 59, C. 

1* Lange, History of Materialism, I. 124. 

IS Ennead. '" ''■ ' 

18 Dill, Roman Society from Nero to M. Aurelius, 396. 

^'^ Acad, II. 36:39. 

i« pp., 65. 

i» Ritter, Hist. Anc. Philosophy, IV. 222. 

-" Cruttwell, Hist. Roman Literature, 478. 



134 



CHAPTER IV, 

CLASSICAL ART 

I. The Love of Nature 

The reader is already familiarized Avith our theory 
of Art as the dim revelation of the unseen and causal 
through its sensible results. The development of 
Art then, like that of Science demands a certain 
equilibrium between the two impulses of the human 
spirit; but it differs in this. The Greeks, we saw, 
attained only a slight success in science because their 
sense of causality was so defective that they never 
recognised the invariability of natural processes : and 
without that recognition any great scientific advance 
is impossible. But that rule does not apply to art, 
since the latter seeks not for precise and verifiable 
formulas but for the dim manifestation to feeling 
of what cannot be precisely formulated in thought. 
Thus it happened that while Greece made no great 
scientific advance, her art is the world's wonder. 

The Genesis of Greek Art. This theory of the 
two blended impulses — the Oriental and the Occi- 
dental — is verified even by the geography of classi- 
cal art. For, the Greeks of all Western people were 
in closest contact with the Orient. More than that, 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

their art began in the isles between the European 
and Asiatic coasts, and above all, in those splendid 
but ill-fated cities which the Greeks founded in Asia 
Minor. In these places, half Greek and half Orien- 
tal the two world impulses met and mingled : and 
there classical art commenced its career of glory. 
Thence across the Aegean isles as a bridge it passed 
over to Athens and the mainland. 

But geography alone would not give a sufficient 
explanation. For, the two impulses would be in a 
very unstable equilibrium ; the native impulse would 
persist and grow, the alien one would tend to fade 
away. The Greek impulse, engrossed with visible 
results, utilitarian, skeptical, tended to sordidness : 
and so it needed the uplift of great events to bring 
about that exaltation of spirit wherein noble emo- 
tions unknown at other times, suddenly flower forth. 
Two such periods of exaltation Greece seems to have 
had. The first rose from the Greek conquests in 
Asia in Homeric times ; after that there was a de- 
clension. Then came the victory, over the Persians 
— an almost incalculable event — bringing with it 
such an access of moral as well as martial enthus- 
iasm as perhaps no other people has ever known. 
And after that another slow declension from which 
there was no recovery. 

The Love of Nature. The chief characteristic 
and crowning excellence of India's art we have seen 
to be its wide, deep sympathy with nature. But this 
the classical Greek entirely lacked. He had poetic 
sympathy only for man, and most often only for the 

136 



CLASSICAL ART 

Greek man. That all living things were the products 
of virtually one vital process, that "a. mystic har- 
mony" bound man, beast and insect together was to 
him not only an idle but a repulsive dream. En- 
grossed with results he valued external nature only 
for its uses. "So- far as I can recollect," says Rus- 
kin, ''every Homeric landscape intended to be beauti- 
ful is composed of a fountain, a meadow and a 
shady grove. Or, as Schiller declares, the Greeks 
reproduce the details of nature with care but we see 
that they take no interest or heart in them; their 
impatient imagination only traverses them tO' pass 
beyond tO' the drama of human life. And a more re- 
cent critic notes as characteristic of Greek literature 
that Vvfhere the scenery is of that wild and pictur- 
esque character which most delights the true lover of 
nature, the splendid natural features of the place 
are never mentioned." ^ 

Alexandrian Nature Love. The same critic in 
another work notes it as a curious fact that from a 
city-life in the midst of great sand-hills bare of 
vegetation should spring the only poetry in all Greek 
literature which makes the delights of rural life its 
theme.^ But the mystery vanishes when we remem- 
ber that this city was the one where Oriental in- 
fluences centralised. Furthermore, the poetry re- 
ferred to belongs to that period when the two world 
impulses, as we saw in the last chapter, were so 
harmonized that physical science also flourished at 
Alexandria. Thus closely do the facts of history 
dove-tail together to prove our theory. 

^37 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

Still the Alexandrian sentiment is rather pallid. 
It seems to be of a descriptive, scientific cast without 
that poetic fervor which characterizes the nature-love 
of India ; or, as has been well said,^ it is only descrip- 
tion not interpretation. 

Roman Sentiment. The Roman interest in nature 
is like the Alexandrian — artificial and quasi- 
scientific. It is the utilitarian element, "the com- 
fort, ease — in a word, the body not the spirit of 
nature that the Roman poets celebrate." Alpine 
scenery suggested no- associations but those of horror 
and desolation. And even the fondness for woods, 
rills and flowers springs more from weariness of 
city-life than from any craving to be alone with na- 
ture — the speechless interpreter of the unchanging 
eternal Cause of all. 

Landscape Painting. A modern critic has called 
Virgil a landscape painter ; but one smiles at that 
when he remembers that real landscape painting was 
an unknown art in either Greece or Rome. The few 
attempts in that direction "never rose above a birds- 
eye view or an insipid scenography."* 

From all directions then the historic proofs con- 
verge to verify my thesis. The true love of nature 
is the very climax of the Oriental emphasis upon 
causality as invariable and infimite: it was so' far 
removed from the view of the Greeks and Romans — 
engrossed with ever changing results, averse to the 
infinite — that they could not grasp it even as a dim 
revelation of poetic art. 

138 



CLASSICAL ART 

IT. Sculpture and Architecture 

Greek Sculpture. Art, we repeat, is the dim 
revelation of the unseen and causal in its external 
results. But the most exalted conception of this 
causality which the Greeks could securely grasp was 
embodied not in external nature but in the human 
form.. There they found the truest disclosure of 
what was at least divine, if not infinite. And they 
saw that - the highest human beauty consisted not 
in mere regularity of feature or outward conformity 
to type but in the expression, the mirroring of the 
inner life upon face and form. Then they strove to 
represent outwardly this ideal of beauty. It seems 
almost a miracle of creative genius that a block of 
white stone, lifeless, without motion or light in the 
eyes or color upon the cheeks, should be made to 
reveal ever so dimly the mysteries of the human 
spirit. But this the Greek masters did with such 
skill and power that ever since — except for one brief 
period — sculpture has seemed almost a lost art. 

Thus through its masterpieces of sculpture, 
Greece gave to the world the first and greatest of 
all lessons in artistic method. She exhibited in 
flawless examples the infinite capabilities of form 
as a revealer of beauty. Future ages were to teach 
two other lessons showing the full capabilities of 
light and sound. But the Greek lesson was the 
first not only in the order of time but of importance ; 
for, the beauties of color and even of sound are 

139 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

superinduced upon those of form and cannot exist 
without them. This is the reason why after thou- 
sands of years the Greek age still remains supreme 
in the realm of art. Every other age returns to it 
as the pupil to his master. 

Greek Architecture. The sculpture and the archi- 
tecture of Greece are twin sisters. But there is a 
peculiarity about the latter which wonderfully veri- 
fies our theory of art. It will be remembered that 
in treating of beauty of form in the first book we 
gave Hogarth's rule interdicting the circle as an 
aesthetic curve and we explained his rule by the fact 
that the circle is an obvious and obtrusive instead 
of a dim manifestation of causal order. Now the 
philosophic writers of Greece were not acquainted 
with this rule; Aristotle holds it as an axiom that 
the circle is the ideal of perfection, and as we shall 
see hereafter, his teaching upon this point, being 
handed down through the centuries delayed Kepler 
for many years in his discoveries and so retarded 
the dawn of modern science. Plato, too, had the 
same exalted opinion concerning the circle ; he even 
argued that man was the most perfect animal because 
his head was a sphere ! ^ But somehow the archi- 
tects wliO' built the noblest Greek temples felt differ- 
ently. There are no circles in their architectural 
lines ; but instead thereof there is a minute elliptical 
curvature in what seem at first perfectly straight 
lines; the vertical lines all curve imperceptibly to- 
wards a common but distant centre; the horizontal 
ones have an equally subtle convexity. So imper- 

140 



Classical art 

ceptible are these faint curvatures that art critics 
did not discover them at all until a few years ago : 
but they are now recognised as the secret of that 
subtle grace and delicacy which lifted the Parthenon 
even in its ruins above all other human structures. 

But Greek architecture did not stay long at this 
zenith where ineffable beauty sprang out of sim- 
plicity and repose as from some power unseen. 
Creative genius gave way to inventiveness, mechani- 
cal devices, straining after novelty and over-loaded 
ornament.*^ But of this decay we can here note only 
the end as revealed at Rome. 

Roman Architecture. As practical builders the 
Romans were unrivalled. They performed amazing 
feats of engineering skill ; they built imposing edi- 
fices, profusely decorated, instinct with all the pomp 
and pride of Roman character. But the supreme 
principle is always a straining after grandiose effects, 
immensity, costliness, mechanical ingenuity. Ever}^- 
thing is on exhibition. Rarely is there a touch that 
appeals to the imagination, lifts emotion upward, 
suggests the calm, the reserve, the unity of creative 
power. 

Take for example that most characteristic feature 
of their architecture, the arch, which the Romans 
borrowed through the Etruscans from the East. 
They employed it skillfully in their grand engineer- 
ing and building projects; but they were always 
blind to its aesthetic possibilities; those they left to 
be developed in distant ages amidst the wilds of 
Northern Europe. Recall again what has just been 

141 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

said concerning beauty of form; then contrast the 
heaviness and monotony of the semi-circular Roman 
arch with the aerial Hghtness and grace of the 
pointed gothic style. Do we not have here another 
conclusive proof that the essence of art is dimness 
of revelation? 

Again, this revelation is always a revelation of 
unity — that is, of the only true unity of dependence 
or causality. But the Roman decoration of the arch 
sins against this principle of unity also. They still 
adhered to the Greek style of decoration by columns, 
which, after the adoption of the arch, had lost all 
its structural significance and consequent beauty. 
The Coliseum and other like buildings would have 
been much more noble and dignified without the 
unmeaning half-columns and capitals which are 
stuck upon their sides ; for these subserve no struc- 
tural purpose and hence have no- real unity with 
the rows of arches. No small part of the majesty of 
the Coliseum as a ruin is due to the fact that the 
bare arches of the interior are now, by the destruc- 
tion of so large a part of the exterior shell, left 
exposed in their natural strength and simplicity. 

NOTES 

1 Mahaffy, Silver Age, 372. 

^ The Progress of Hellenism, 69. 

■* Poinsett, Comparative Literature, 260. Laprade also notes the vastness 
and profundity of the Indian sentiment for nature and contrasts 
it with the Greek, La Sentiment d. I. Nature chez las Modernes, 216. 

■* Brunn, Gescli. d. Gricchischcn Kiinsilcr, 11. 308. 

^ Ritchie, Plato, 127. 

•^ Brunn, Gesch. d. G. Kiinstler, I. 217. 

142 



CHAPTER V 



THE IDEALISTIC PROTEST 



Buddhism, as we have seen, was mainly a social 
revolt, the rising of the warrior caste against the 
Brahmans'; despite some superficial differences, it 
really made no very radical departure from the 
general tenor of thought in India. But the Greek 
protest was an intellectual movement that seemed 
bent upon reversing the whole current of classical 
thought. Already I have noted that our modern 
view of classical antiquity has become a chaos of 
inconsistencies and obscurity through the failure of 
historians to discriminate between the dominant 
tendency and the protest.^ It remains now to show 
the entire incapacity of the protest to effect any 
real reformation. 

The Orphic Mysteries. Some faint traces of the 
counter-movement may perhaps be found in the 
Homeric poems ; ~ they are abundant in the later 
poetry." But it was the dominant note in the Orphic 
mysteries. The Orphic literature, says Pausanias, 
has less artistic merit than the Homeric, but it is 
imbued with a deeper sense of sacred things. It 
had borrowed much from Egypt and the East. For 
the personified abstractions of classical mythology 

143 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

it substituted a true Oriental pantheism ; human souls 
were emanations from the soul of the world ; * the 
present life was a punishment for the sins of a 
previous existence, the body, a grave or prison: all 
men were subject to the law of transmigration.^ 
With this a strong ascetic tendency and a rigid 
sacerdotalism were combined. So far the secret 
rites of Orpheus veiled a thorough Orientalism of 
the ordinary type. 

The Self-sacriijcing God. But there is one ele- 
ment in this Orphism of peculiar interest for the 
philosophy of history. We have already noted that 
in Vedic religion there are obscure intimations of the 
Infinite as having created the universe by an act of 
self-sacrifice and that this view slowly faded and 
gave way to the conception of the empty Absolute. 
Now, this doctrine of the self-sacrificing God is im- 
bedded in Orphism most hideously corrupted indeed, 
but still firmly held as the most profound and sacred 
of mysteries. The climax of the mystic Dionysus 
worship is that the "Wild-Beast God'' is torn in 
pieces hy himself, and his worshippers purified by 
his blood. Modern critics are apt to be so shocked 
by the exterior horribleness of the myth that they 
see not the pearl within — its spiritual meaning. But 
I think that Euripides saw it, when an old man in 
a strange land he wrote the grandest of his dramas, 
the Bacchse.^ 

The Pythagoreans. We have already shown the 
indebtedness of Pythagoras to India, not only for 
his theology and ethics, but also for his supposed 

144 



THE IDEALISTIC PROTEST 

scientific discoveries. So^ it is here needful only to 
note that he was not content with a purely intellectual 
or educational form of faith but attempted an actual 
reconstruction of society; the classical principles of 
freedom, democracy and individualism were to be 
suppressed and a new social order arise marked by 
absolutism, the supremacy of a specula.tive class un- 
questioning faith and a more than Oriental restric- 
tion upon rights of property. How signally he 
failed in this bold attempt to reverse the whole 
classical movement need hardly be mentioned. 

Plato. We come now to one with whom the 
protest against the Occidental impulse reached its 
climax of intensity and power. In metaphysics, 
Plato's name for over two thousand years has been 
a synonym for the idealism of the East. In ethics 
he came as near as it was possible for a Greek to 
come to accepting the ascetic ideal and throwing 
off the bonds of classic utilitarianism.^ In art also 
he reverts to Oriental principles, condemns Homer 
and interdicts the Greek drama in his ideal common- 
wealth.*^ In political science he fought against 
almost everything that public sentiment regarded as 
highest and best; he had an Oriental antipathy to 
freedom ; he admired Egypt because there the priests 
were the sole depositaries of knowledge,^ and be- 
cause no innovations in art had been permitted there 
for ten thousand years ; heresy he counted as a crime 
meriting not merely one or two but many deaths. ^° 
All individualism was to be ruthlessly sacrified to 
the demand for civic unity; individual rights of 

I4'5 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

property were to be replaced by a communism so 
sweeping as to include even wives and children/^ 
Even the commercialism so instinctive in the typical 
Greek, he condemned as base and contemptible. 
Above all, Plato^ accepted and glorified again and 
again that doctrine of metempsychosis which Greece 
and Rome derided but which India made the very 
cornerstone of all her thinking. 

It goes without saying that Plato's reformatory 
efforts led to nothing. But what I wish to particu- 
larly point out is that Plato himself was not really 
emancipated from the dominant impulse in Greek 
thought and life; he was not fully convinced by his 
own eloquence. His dialogues when carefully com- 
pared reveal a spirit at war with itself. Hence that 
famous "inconsistency of Plato" of which Cicero 
complained — that vacillation of belief which has so 
puzzled the German critics. It is the inconsistency 
of one who in spite of all his protests is swept away 
on the mighty tide of prevailing opinion. 

The Platonic Ideas. Remember now that Plato 
wavers not merely about matters of detail or of 
secondary importance, but about the very ground- 
work of his system — the theory of ideas. At present 
almost all critics agree that there is a marked differ- 
ence between the theory in the earlier and that in 
the later Dialogues ; but they are entirely unable to 
agree as to what the new theory is. One recent 
critic enumerates six different views that have been 
advanced and then adds another of his own which 
to my mind is the most preposterous of all the 

146 



THE IDEALISTIC PROTEST 

seven/" Now add to this that Plato himself no- 
where formally unfolds his new doctrine; and that 
he nowhere attempts to answer the objections which 
in the Parmenides he himself had raised against the 
theory of ideas. Add further that Plato's first two 
successors, as head of his school, both virtually 
abandon the doctrine of ideas. To the Indian 
thinkers, idealism was as an axiom; to Plato and 
his pupils it was but a conjecture, alluring indeed, 
but beset by hopeless difficulties. 

There is the same wavering in the Platonic ethics ; 
the spirit of the Protagoras is in marked contrast 
with that of the Gorgias; and nowhere has Plato 
given a definite statement of his ethical theory. His 
political theories also — both the higher ideal of the 
Republic and the "second best" one of the Laws — 
he virtually admits tO' be impracticable. 

Naturally what did not more than half convince 
Plato himself, did not convince the Greek world. 
Athenseus ^^ devotes many pages to a setting forth 
of what he calls "the malignity of Plato." That 
doubtless expresses the sentiment of the average 
Greek to whom Plato was an idle dreamer, an ill- 
natured censor of almost everything that Greece 
admired and loved. 

Hence that gloom which is said to have over- 
shadowed the later years of Plato.^* His protest 
had been in vain. His philosophy took no firm 
root in Greek life; it throve only when centuries 
afterward it was transplanted to Alexandria where 
Oriental influences were supreme. 

147 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

Greek civilisation was a one-sided development, 
powerless to reform or check its own exaggerations 
Only through that truth, can any one fully under- 
stand Plato and Greek thought. 

NOTES 

1 Book II, Chap. I, Sec. I. 

- Muller, Lit. Anc. Greece, I. i8. Niigelsbach, Horn. Theologie, 414. 

2 Nagelsbach, N achhomerische Theologie, I. 449, 452, etc. 

* Lobeck, Aglaopliawus, I. 756. Itaque quod Pythagorei docent animos 
ex mundi anima haustos et delibatos esse idem in Orphei carmine 
Physica inscripto enunciatum est. 

^ Geihard, Orpheus u. d. Orphiker, 18. Nagelsbach, etc. 

" Murray, Euripides, 168. Note. The ablest and most thoughtful ot 
recent criticisms. But the author yields too much to modern cant 
and narrowness when he speaks of the Orphic doctrine as "a 
confusion of thought," "incredibly primitive and uncanny," tran- 
scending reason, etc. 

■^ Michelis, Die Philosophie Platan's, II. 319. Grote {Plato, II. 165. 
Note} notes the similarity between the ethics of Plato and of the 
Hindu Sankhya. 

^ Leges, III. 701; VII. 799. 

9 Ibid, II, 656. 

10 Ibid, X. 909 seq. 

^1 Mahaffy (Hist. Greek Lit., II) rather mistily denies this comm.unism. 

1^ Ritchie, Plato. 

■■■2 Athenaeus, II. 105-120. 

1* Mahaffy, Hist. Greek Lit., II. 107. 



148 



CHAPTER VI 

SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN GREECE AND ROME 

I. External or Political Structure 

The City. In the political structure of classic 
societ)^ the unit, as every one knows, is the city. 
Greek and Roman politics were thus in polar con- 
trast with those of India which, as we have seen, 
were feudal and rural. In India, relatively to the 
immense population, there were very few cities, and 
these were merely the courts of kings. These royal 
cities were in fact but villages of more than usual 
size: their walls were fences or hedges, or at best, 
oi wood ; ^ within were scattered houses, gardens, 
lakes, fields and forests." But classic civilisation 
lacked that emphasis upon causality retrospective, 
revering the past, which made the Indian cling to 
the ancient village life — made him also a rapt lover 
of nature and rural things — made him restrict indi- 
vidual rights of property to such land as the indi- 
vidual tilled. Lacking all such traits, the utilitarian 
Greek or Roman took to the city as naturally as a 
fish to water ; its strong walls protected him ; its 
crowds fed his love of novelty and excitement ; his 
wits were sharpened by much social friction. 

149 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

Modern critics have neglected this evident con- 
trast. But the old Romans, those astute politicians, 
were fully conscious of this fundamental difference 
between Eastern and Western civilisation. In their 
efforts to reorganise Asia Minor according to their 
own interests, their chief and constant care was to 
found new cities, to centralise the scattered popula- 
tion, in every possible way to promote urban at the 
expense of rural life.^ 

The Ruin of Rural Greece. But this upbuilding 
of the cities meant ruin for the country. Even so 
far back as the days of Solon, the rural population 
of Attica had sunk to surprising depths of beggary 
and woe. The land-owners had betaken themselves 
to the city to live in ease and idleness; the lands 
were cultivated either by slaves or else by tenants 
who received for their share one-sixth of the crop.* 
It was an extortion never paralleled, I think, out- 
side the Greek and Roman v/orld. Among the wild 
peoples of Sumatra even the slave is permitted to 
keep one-half of what he produces.^ Here in 
America the tenant on the rich garden-lands of the 
West retains two-thirds of the crop as his share, and 
still finds existence rather discouraging. But the 
Greek tenants could escape starvation only by run- 
ning in debt, and being unable to pay were sold as 
slaves into Egypt or other foreign lands. 

Of course efforts were made to check such hideous 
iniquity ; but they seem to have availed little except 
to delay the inevitable, and so prolong the misery 
of the wretched rustics. Strabo speaks of many 

150 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN GREECE AND ROME 

parts of Greece as deserted except here and there a 
decaying hamlet. All other authorities, Pliny, 
Polybius, concur. 

The Roman World. Under Roman rule there is 
the same picture of rural devastation with the dark 
colors deepened. Cato tells us that on good land in 
som.e parts of Italy the tenant received only one- 
eighth, and in some cases only one-ninth of the 
produce for his share. Prices too fell to ruinous 
rates, because the government collected grain as 
tribute in distant parts and either gave it av^'^ay or 
sold it for a song to- the populace. Thus free culti- 
vation became impossible. In Etruria, for example, 
from town to town, stretched one unbroken series 
of great domains whereon no free laborer was to 
be seen.** Cities multiplied; in Spain seventy-one 
new cities arose in a single century.'^ But the coun- 
try was laid waste. 

Forms of Government. The Greek genius, as we 
have seen, was engrossed with the conception of 
form, made it the supreme consideration not only 
in art but in philosophy, religion and above all, in 
politics. Plato, Aristotle and all the rest were never 
tired of discussing the different forms of govern- 
ment. Now political forms are doubtless important 
but only secondarily so. The best political forms 
in the hands of a people incapable of using them 
aright are no better than a Damascus blade in the 
hands of a madman. For this reason I leave the 
discussion of the Greek and Roman forms of gov- 
ernment to the antiquarians. 

151 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY ) 

II. Commerce 

From the outer forms we pass now to the inner 
Hfe of society — the industrial movement. And here 
we find that the same simple law which threw such 
a flood of light upon the social life of India, illumines 
equally well that of Greece and Rome. Wealth is 
the product or result of labor. India emphasizing 
causality exalted labor and despised wealth. Classi- 
cal antiquity absorbed in results exalted wealth but 
despised and crushed labor. It is an almost mathe- 
matical antithesis ; the same movement but in exactly 
opposite directions. 

Rights of Property. The first proof of the classic 
tendency to exalt — to worship — wealth, lies in the 
extraordinary expansion and fierce assertion of 
rights oi property which characterize Greek and 
pre-eminently Roman civilisation. India, as has been 
shown, saw that other causes co-operated with the 
individual owner in the production of wealth and so 
she restricted individual rights of property. Roman 
law ignored these other causes and expanded the 
individual right of ownership to the uttermost. 

The Paternal Power. This tendency to expand 
rights of property was notably evinced in that enor' 
mous power which the Roman law gave the father 
oyer his family. The Romans themselves recognised 
this as something unique. The Institutes of Jus-, 
tinian declare that "the power which we have over 
our children is peculiar to Roman citizens and is 
found in no other nation." ^ But in Justinian's day 

152 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN GREECE AND ROME 

this power had been somewhat curtailed : in former 
times it had been absolutely unlimited. The father 
might sell his son into slavery ^ or kill him, and no 
one could interfere. Strangest of all, this power 
lasted so long as the father lived ; the son might 
marry, have children, grow rich or famous, become 
a high official in the state and still remain virtually 
a slave; his property, his person and his children 
still remained under the despotic dominion of his 
father until the latter's death. 

Nor was this enormous power a mere incident, 
a morbid growth of Roman law. It was simply 
one outgrowth of the universal tendency to exag- 
gerate rights of control and ownership. 

Reman Law. Few commonplaces are more 
familiar than that which celebrates the genius of 
Rome for law. But historians have failed to notice 
that this genius confined itself to< developing a single 
department of law, and that the changes made were 
inspired by one fixed purpose of doubtful value. The 
criminal law, by far the most important branch in 
its bearing upon life and liberty, underwent no 
change ; tO' the end it retained provisions so archaic 
and absurd that they almost seem to have been de- 
vised to convict the innocent and clear the guilty. 
But the innovations in civil law were many, and 
they all tend to enlarge the rights of the individual 
owner. In fine, the genius of the Romans for law 
devoted itself to investing individual rights of prop- 
erty with an ever increasing sacredness. 

Landed Property. India remembered that values, 
153 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

especially in land, were of collective rather than 
individual origin; hence social or communal rights 
to the land were always held as paramount and 
sacred. In Israel, although commercialism had been 
there considerably developed, lands could be alien- 
ated only for a term of years. Indeed, Rome at 
first granted only very limited rights of property to 
the individual owner; according to some writers, 
originally no citizen owned an "inch of Roman soil; 
he could only possess and enjoy it by permission of 
the populus." It is at least certain that for ages 
there was no right of alienation except in rare cases ; 
and even then the transfer could be effected only by 
a solemn ceremony, public and religious in its na- 
ture and burdened by minute formalities, the slight- 
est neglect of which invalidated the entire transac- 
tion. 

The "genius of the Romans for law" gradually 
removed these restrictions, absolved the individual 
right from all social claims, and finally invented the 
absolute title in fee simple. 

Invention of Mortgages. A similar order of in- 
novations were those that enlarged the power of 
pledging property. At first nothing could be pledged 
for debt except by actually passing into the posses- 
sion of the creditor ; " but Roman law invented the 
so-called hypotheca, not essentially different from 
the modern mortgage.^^ Also the class of objects 
that could be pledged was greatly extended so as 
include future crops or other expectations ; ^- liberty 
was also granted to lay successive mortgages upon 

154 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN GREECE AND ROME 

the same piece of property. Thus the basis was 
laid for that expansion of credit which ultimately 
converted the Roman people into a nation of debtors 
and centralised virtually all wealth into the hands 
of a few creditors. 

Wills. Still another enlargement of property 
rights was gained by the invention of wills. In 
Indian law, as we have seen, a true will was un- 
known. Even at Athens the laws of Solon invali- 
dated any. will which disinherited the direct male 
descendants of the testator. In Roman law also 
the testamentary power was at first very limited : a 
will was virtually a sale which once made was irre- 
vocable. But the testament was finally made revoc- 
able and so became a true v/ill taking effect only at 
the death of the testator. Thus the owner gained 
a grip upon his own which not even the hand of 
death could loosen. 

Delinquent Debtors. The sacredness which Rome 
attached to property rights is curiously evinced by 
her treatment of the debtor class. Under the Roman 
law, the main business of the state — after its mili- 
tary and police business — seems tO' have been the 
collection of private debts; but India, on the con- 
trary, had so little regard for acquisitiveness that 
the civil power did not interfere to enforce fulfill- 
ment of promises to pay. The Hindu creditor there- 
fore was driven to strange expedients to- obtain Iiis 
dues : his last resort was to stand for days fasting 
or even to stab himself to death ^^ at the door of 
his debtor in order to thus bring down the judgment 

155 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

of heaven upon the dehnquent. But Roman law 
completely reversed this mode of procedure; it em- 
powered the creditor to sell the debtor into^ slavery. 
Or, if there were several creditors, they were author- 
ized to cut up the debtor's body and divide the 
pieces between them. 

This peculiar method of collecting debts never be- 
came obsolete so long as the Republic lasted. It 
is true that in the third century B.C. another form 
of civil procedure was devised; but the new form, 
we are told, "was not visibly different from the 
older except that it was far more favorable to the 
interests of the creditors and the money-lending 
classes." Not until the closing years of the Republic 
was it possible to levy an execution upon the goods 
O'f the debtor instead of selling him into slavery. 
And even this was optional with the creditor, "the 
debtor having no way of saving himself from the 
severity of the older procedure, if his adversary pre- 
ferred it to bonorum venditio/' " 

Corporations. A feeble sense of causality tends 
always to personify abstractions. The Romans es- 
pecially would deify any common noun — such as 
fortune, fever or theft — build a temple and offer 
sacrific in its honor. In the same way, Roman law 
personified wealth as a legal corporation. And this 
invisible monster, without either soul or body, yet 
living forever and wielding irresistible power, was 
the agent wherewith Rome plundered the world. 

To these corporations the state relinquished many 
of its own proper functions. Great companies were 

156 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN GREECE AND ROME 

formed for collecting the taxes and executing the 
public works demanded in different parts of the em- 
pire; and the provincials soon learned that where- 
ever such a corporation came their law vanished 
and liberty was at an end.'" Still more sinister was 
the influence of the corporations upon the adminis- 
tration of justice at Rome. To this end pains were 
taken to distribute their shares as widely as possible. 
It was both illegal and disgraceful for senators to 
engage in trade; but they could and did become 
secret partners in these vast combinations for plun- 
dering the empire. Such of the common people also, 
as were not entirely pauperized, invested their small 
earnings in shares, and sO' there was a great multi- 
tude who could be relied upon to pack the legislative 
assemblies and to vote as the corporations dictated. 

Reign of Commercialism. Honest trade, re- 
stricted tO' its proper functions, is as useful and 
meritorious as any other kind of labor. But Rome, 
by magnifying private rights at the expense of social 
claims, by investing wealth with abnormal powers 
had converted commerce into an enginery of evil and 
ruin ; ^" Greece before her had taken not a few steps 
in the same direction. Even Homer, the standard 
of Greek religion and morality seems to make no 
distinction between commerce and piracy. And 
Athen^eus bluntly ascribes the opulence of Greece to 
plunder ; before the temple at Delphi was despoiled, 
he says, silver and especially gold were very rare, 
and only after Alexander had brought back the 
treasures of the East did wealth predominate far 

157 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

and wide. In fact long before Alexander's day, the 
favorite dream of Athenian statesmanship had been 
the enrichment of Greece by the plundering oi Asia/'' 

But what Athens had only dreamed of, Rome 
realized. She was the despoiler of all lands. To 
famine and flood and all other natural calamities the 
unhappy provincials were now taught to add — "the 
avarice of the Romans." ^^ 

Such was the outcome of that engrossment with 
results that characterized the Romans. Honest trade 
they counted as disgraceful because its gains were 
moderate. But commerce on the grand capitalistic 
scale, shameless usury,^'' monopolies that corrupted 
the courts of justice, extortions that robbed millions 
to enrich a few — these were the gods in the real 
Roman pantheon. 

III. Labor 

In the same degree that classical civilisation fos- 
tered the acquisitive impulse, the greed of wealth, 
it degraded labor the cause of wealth. The Greeks 
and Romans intent solely upon results saw in labor 
nothing but a means to the end ; and of all means 
the most disagreeable, repulsive and ignoble. There 
were other means — military conquest, cunning and 
monopoly — far easier, swifter and more honorable. 

The Degradation of Labor. Hence the laborer 
came to be, in Aristotle's phrase, "an animated tool." 
Plato thought that the artisan stood in the same 
degraded position relatively to the soldier that appe- 
tite stands to reason. ^° Aristotle, alM^ays eager to 

158 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN GREECE AND ROME 

contradict Plato whenever possible, agreed with him 
perfectly in his contempt for labor. No one, he 
said, practising a mechanical art could live the classi- 
cal life of virtue, and therefore "the best regulated 
states would not permit an artisan to be a citizen." ^^ 
The Romans, it need hardly be said, were of the 
same opinion. "All mechanical laborers," Cicero 
wrote, "are by their profession vile." ^' 

Slavery. The Roman slave-system has been much 
obscured by the unconscious bias of modern writers. 
Here I shall strive to sketch briefly some cardinal, 
incontrovertible facts. 

At first the system was very much like what it 
still is in savage lands : the small farmer in Italy 
worked by the side of his slave on almost equal 
terms. But the small farms were bought up, the 
farmers fled to Rome to be fed by the state and an 
era of capitalist production set in. On the great 
plantations slaves, branded like cattle and shackled 
together in chain-gangs, toiled by day. When night 
came they were locked up in subterranean prisons 
with only the roof and a small part of the wall above 
ground and the windows too high to be reached. ^^ 
"A slave," the noble Cato used to say, "must either 
work or sleep." 

In the city slavery was no less brutal. At the 
main entrance to palatial mansions the doorkeeper 
was chained up like a dog.^* The master might kill 
his slave whenever he pleased; Augustus had one 
crucified for eating a quail. ^^ Thus the Roman home 
became a nursery of whatever was vile; "every great 

IIS9 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

house was a miniature of the Empire under a Cali- 
gula or Nero." -'^ For this reason Quintilian urges 
parents to- send their boys away to school in order 
that their tender years may be kept from the daily 
contamination which the scenes of home-life afford.^' 

After Oriental influences had infiltrated into 
Roman life there are some traces of a less brutal 
sentiment concerning slaves, especially among the 
Stoic declaimers. But until the age of the An- 
tonines, the harshness of the law of slavery was 
never mitigated and then only in a very slight de- 
gree.^- And the general trend of imperial law in 
pagan times was quite different. It even checked 
the humane feeling which many masters felt when 
death drew near; at least there was a statute for- 
bidding a testator from manumitting more than a 
small proportion — about one-fifth — of his slaves.^* 
Claudius even issued an edict reducing "such freed- 
men as were ungrateful" to their patrons to their 
former condition of slavery.^" Such facts show 
the real Roman sentiment concerning slavery much 
more than a few chance sentences culled from the 
Stoic declamations. 

Considering then its enormous proportions and 
its brutality we must agree wdth Mommsen/^ I think, 
that Roman slavery was more monstrous than any 
other form of servitude upon the globe. ^^ How 
great the contrast with India where slavery was so 
mild and rare that a Greek ambassador living there 
for years denied its very existence. 

Hostility to Industrial Organisation. In another 
1 60 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN GREECE AND ROME 

way also, classical antiquity greatly degraded labor 
— by fiercely opposing all efforts for industrial unity. 
The instinct for unity has always stirred in the 
working classes. At Rome, as everywhere else, 
workingmen delighted in little confraternities formed 
for mutual aid and good cheer ; in the early ages we 
find them in the shape of the celebrated corporations 
of Numa, true guilds created and fostered by the 
state. But for some reason these appear to have 
degenerated from trade unions into mere political 
caucuses. " Nevertheless the more that the humble 
toilers were oppressed and trampled under foot, the 
more they felt this divine hunger for unity, and so 
other fraternities or collegia arose. Slaves, needy 
veterans, artisans and other humble folk met in these 
gatherings upon a common footing; there was 
neither bond nor free. But already the Roman 
republic had gone far on the broad, glittering way 
that leadeth downward — the way of conquest and 
plunder. Already she had written deep in her laws 
that wealth was sacred and labor accursed. And so 
she began to pursue the brotherhoods of toil with a 
bitter hatred. Two centuries before the Christian 
era the collegia were put under stringent police and 
most odious restrictions. In the Augustan age they 
were entirely prohibited except associations confined 
to the celebrating of funeral rites : even these were 
not allowed to meet more than once a month and 
then only to attend to the obsequies of deceased 
members. All assemblies except for this purpose 
were criminal ; to convoke one was high treason. 

i6i 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

Note further that while Rome was so hostile to 
industrial union, she was more than friendly to the 
combinations of capital. Great trading companies 
rose upon every side ; even agriculture was conducted 
upon the gigantic scale of the capitalist. Above all 
the Roman "genius for law" invented the idea of a 
corporation — a legal fiction devised to promote the 
united action of wealth and to facilitate schemes of 
monopoly. All this casts a fierce light upon the 
classical tendency. The Romans were individualists, 
but still they saw the benefit of unity and used it in 
those narrow spheres where it would promote their 
own purposes. But they looked with terror and 
hatred upon that wider unity ordained by the very 
nature of man — the brotherhood of toil. The effort 
to crush industrial organization, however, did not 
wholly succeed. The classical historians, for evident 
reasons, are silent concerning such matters, but we 
know^ from exhumed tablets and similar sources that 
these labor unions were to be found in all parts of 
the Empire. They generally maintained a sort of 
subterranean existence in secret places. They were 
especially numerous in the East; and as they there 
included almost the entire working class, it is more 
than probable that the Carpenter of Nazareth was 
enrolled among their members. Certainly there is 
much in His Gospel which can best be interpreted 
as the bold proclamation to the world of what had 
long been timidly whispered in these secret con- 
venticles of labor. 

162 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN GREECE AND ROME 

Such then was classical civilisation. No essential 
element thereof has been here neglected, all have 
been directly traced back to their origin in a defective 
sense of causality. It is thus an incontrovertible 
induction, because it is based upon no hypothesis, 
but upon the most primary and indubitable of all 
facts — the nature of thought. 

Furthermore it leads to something beyond an aca- 
demic wrangle over archaic paradoxes and absurd- 
ities. It has an intensely practical interest. For 
modern civilisation is closely akin to the classical. 
It is dominated by the same impulse and afflicted 
with the same diseases. It too has lost faith in the 
self-sacrificing Infinite. It too is exploiting a 
morality which has no basis except in vague feeling 
and empty phrases. It too in its greed of gain has 
been cruelly unjust to labor. It too would be 
doomed, as Greece and Rome were, if it were not 
for the promise of a new regeneration. 

NOTES 

1 Mahaffy, Silver Age of Greek History, 28. 

2 De la Valle, Travels in India (in Wheeler, Hist, of India, IV. 448.) 

2 Mommsen, Hist. Rome, IV. 179-182. Also Provinces of Roman Em- 
pire, I. 355. 

* Wilson, The State, 67. 

^ Westermarck, Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, I. 677 

" Greenridge. Hist. Rome, I. 179. 

' Arnold, Roman System of Provincial Administration. 

* Institutes, Tit. 9. 

* In the Twelve Tables, however, it is said: "If a son shall be thrice 

sold by his father he shall be relieved from the patria potestas." 
That is after redeeming himself three times. 
^° Proprie pignus dicimus quod ad creditorem transit: hypothecam 
cum non transit, nee possessio ad creditorem: Digest, XIII. 7, 9, 2. 

163 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

^1 Institutiones, Moyle, 320. 

^■2 Digest, XIII, 7, 37, I. 

1* Maine. Ancient Law. Also Wheeler, History of India, II. 217. 

Note. Wheeler says that in British territory this mode of collecting 

debts has been made a punishable offense. 
^* Justin, Institutiones, I. 625. 
'^^ Livy, XIV. 18. Ubi publicanus esset, ibi aut jus publicum vanum 

aut libertatem sociis nullam esse, 
in LiVji, XXV. 3 and XLIII. 16. "It is an established opinion, the 

common talk not only at Rome but among foreign nations, that in the 

courts of law no rich man however guilty he may be can possibly 

be convicted," Cicero ad Verr., I. i. 
1' Mahaii'y, Greek Life and Thought. 
IS Tacitus, Hist., IV. 74. 
i' The noble Brutus was noted for his extortions, always demanding 

fifty per cent. One of his agents locked up and starved to death 

five municipal senators of a city indebted to Brutus. Arnold, 

Roman System of Provincial Administration, 83. 

20 Republic, IV. 441. 
^^ Politics, VII. 8. 
'■^De Offic, I. 42. 

-^ Greenridge, History, Rome, I. 85. 

2*7fcjrf, 16. , 

'^^ Lecky, Hist. European Morals, II. 321. 

^n Dill, Roman Society from Nero to M. Aurelius, 12. 

*^ Crutwell, Hist. Rom-an Literature, 408. 

-8 Institutiones, I. 8, i et 2. The phrase in this decree of Pius An- 
toninus — "sine causa servum-occiderit " — seems to me as much 
permissive as prohibitory of slave-killing. 

23 If the testator had even thousands of slaves only 100 could be manu- 
mitted. This law lasted until Justinian's time. 

^'^ Suetonius, Claudius, XIII. 26-2^. See also Hobhouse, Morals in 
Evolution, I. 312. 

21 Mommscn, Hist. Rome, III. 87, also 103 and II. 165 seq. Also, 

Eucher, Industrial Evolution, loi: on Roman aristocracy and the 
slave-system. The reaction against Mommsen's indictment of Roman 
slavery, referred to by Dobschutz (Christian Life in the Primitive 
Church, 384. Note) seems to me very captious. 



164 



BOOK III 



THE MIDDLE AGES 



CHAPTER I 

THE CATHOLIC RELIGION 

I. The Secret of Christianity 

The fatal defect of ancient civilisation both 
in the East and the West we have found to 
lie; in the incapacity for reform. From the very 
nature of thought spring two tendencies, one 
emphasizing the cause or origin, the other the 
effect or result. India developed one of these 
impulses, classical antiquity the other. Each of 
them is therefore essentially one-sided and always 
tending to morbid exaggeration. In each there is a 
brilliant period of progress; in each a vague con- 
sciousness of defect, a dim protest against the pre- 
vailing impulse. But each proves powerless to check 
its excesses, to fully awaken the counter-impulse 
needed for the due balance of life — tO' bring about a 
genuine reform. And so both are under the doom of 
degeneration. 

Regeneration. The law of Christian civilisation 
on the other hand is that of regeneration. The word 
reg'eneration or some cognate term — repentance, 
conversion, redemption, newness of life, etc. — meets 

167 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

US everywhere in the New Testament. What we call 
"the Reformation" is but a stupendous and spectac- 
ular example of what is going on every day 
wherever there is Christian life. The demand for 
radical change, for reconciliation with God, for 
regeneration is surely the open secret of Christianity. 

Of course this general view needs to be more 
strictly defined. But for that let the reader wait for 
our unfolding of the successive phases of Christian 
civilisation. If theology is ever to become a true 
science, instead of a mere jumble of sectarian dis- 
putes, the scientific or experimental method must be 
adopted; there must be some such inductive study 
of Christian experience evolving from age to age, 
as we are here attempting. 

The Love of God. It may be well, however, at 
the outset to indicate the theological and ethical 
basis upon which the regenerative power of Chris- 
tianity rests. As for the theologic basis no Chris- 
tian will deny that that consists in the recognition of 
God's love. He is the Infinite Cause, who' acts for 
the sake of others. We have seen already how 
Paganism lost this conviction; in Greece it was 
abandoned altogether; in India it dwindled into the 
barren idea of an abstract Infinite without love. 
But Christianity restored it in all its fullness. 

Mark that Christianty restored what lay hidden 
and lost in the depths of all thinking. For all . 
thinking is a relating oi cause and effect ; and as 
we have seen, there can be no full, uncontradictory 

i68 



THE CATHOLIC RELIGION 

and complete conception of causality except as an 
infinite cause voluntarily sacrificing something- o£ 
its infinitude for the sake of others. 

Humility. Turning now to the ethical basis, we 
find in Christianity the recognition of a new virtue 
quite unknown to antiquity — that of humility. To 
classical self-esteem this virtue seemed a vice, a 
dastard trait fit only for slaves. Even the dejected 
Hindu had it not; he was depressed by his pessi- 
mistic view of life; and yet he imagined that by 
ascetic tortures or by queer speculations he could 
deliver himself from the cruel chain of Karma, from 
the woes and illusions of existence. But the Chris- 
tian know^s that he is weak and sinful, and yet that 
he can do all things when co-laboring with God, co- 
operating with infinite grace. Thus Christian faith 
and virtue spring from the same root and together 
they endow Christianity with its regenerative power. 

Classical and Germanic Life. As we come now 
to study historically the regenerative action of 
Christianity we are at once met by a difficulty due 
to the very great differences between life in the 
eastern and in the western part of the Roman Em- 
pire. In the East the type of civilisation was Orien- 
tal, although not so fully developed as in India; in 
the West was that other type which we have found to 
be in polar contrast with the Asiatic. Evidently 
the regeneration needed in the one case would be 
different from that needed in the other. But to try 
to treat them both in our narrow limits would breed 

169 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

complexity and confusion. Therefore our study 
must be confined to Western Europe with some inci- 
dental reference to Christianity in the East. 

There is also another although minor difficulty. 
We must be on our guard against the vanity of 
many Teutonic writers who have ascribed almost 
everything excellent in modern life to some peculiar 
potency in the character of their savage ancestors. 
But it is all a patriotic delusion. The difference 
between Germanic and classic development was one 
of degree, not of kind. In religion there was a sur- 
prising correspondence, the same fundamental con- 
ception of the divinities,^ the same slight esteem for 
sacrifice" and priests;^ and as for immortality, the 
Germans ascribed that not even to their gods. Tn 
morals there was the same narrow, military code of 
duties. As for "the individualistic instinct of the 
Germans," * doubtless the passion for independence 
was less easily gratified in Rome or Athens than in 
the wilds of Germany ; but in what forest was there 
to be found a more savage, self-asserting individ- 
ualism than that of the Stoic sages who boasted of 
being equal and perhaps superior to God? In fine, 
the differences between the classical and the Ger- 
manic nature were superficial, the fruit of circum- 
stances ; the type of life was identical. 

Against the classical impulse then — of which the 
Germanic was but a ruder form — Catholicism was 
to oppose the counter-impulse. For self-asserting 
individualism, it was to substitute the spirit of de- 

170 



THE CATHOLIC RELIGION 

pendence; instead of utilitarian engrossment with 
results, resignation ; instead of the desire for change, 
the principle of unity and order. Thus the first 
great regeneration of European life was to be ac- 
complished. 

II. Dependence upon the Infinite 

The doctrine of dependence upon the Infinite is of 
the essence of. Christianity in all its forms. But 
what is distinctive of Catholicism is the intensity 
of emphasis upon this doctrine; it is made central 
and supreme, not to be qualified by other consider- 
ations that might seem essential to religion. A 
signal proof of this is furnished by the great Arian 
controversy. 

Arianism. Under the later Roman Empire, the 
religious needs of the West were not those of the 
East. Life in Asia Minor and Egypt had been for 
many centuries saturated with the principle of de- 
pendence, resignation and submissiveness. To re- 
generate these lands there was needed an evangel 
of individualism, a prophet of liberty, the right of 
private judgment and personal responsibility. 

Now, is is a well known fact but one of which his- 
torians have never seen the true significance, that in 
the great controversy between Athanasius and Arius 
the Oriental bishops mainly took the Arian or hu- 
manitarian side. They even accused the Western 
bishops, who were all Athanasians, of seeking tO' 

171 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

introduce a new law whereby they of the West 
should become lords and judges over the East.^ 
Thus Asiatic Christianity seems to have been instinc- 
tively conscious of its special need — the demand in 
the East for a faith that should as fully emphasize 
the human and finite as the divine and infinite factor 
in salvation. But the Asiatic bishops were over- 
powered by numbers and the glamour of external 
unity. From that time Asiatic Christianity began 
to lose its regenerative power. Divided and cor- 
rupt it slowly wasted away. 

Mahometanism. Thus too the rise of Mahomet- 
anism is explained. Crudely and temporarily it 
did the work which Oriental Christianity had been 
prevented from doing. It imparted a new life very 
practical and boundlessly self-reliant in the place of 
the old Oriental life of dependence and apathy. The 
Mahometan abjured all priests and sacrifices. No 
mysteries, no sense of sin or need of forgiveness, 
troubled him. Guided by the sacred book, any man 
by his own efforts — even by a little brave fighting 
on a battle-field — might win eternal bliss. In fact, 
this self-reliant Mahometanism has so many points 
of resemblance to recent Protestantism that many, 
like Max Miiller, have thought that there was no 
vital difference between them.^ 

Furthermore the wreck of Oriental Christianity 
was the cause — not, as is commonly supposed, the 
result — of the marvellous Mahometan victories. 
Wherever the Arabian armies went they met a peo- 

172 



THE CATHOLIC RELIGION 

pie torn to pieces by bitter sectarian hatreds. In 
Egypt, for example, nine-tenths of the people were 
heretics or Copts ; their chief leader said tO' the Arab 
invaders: "With the Greeks (the orthodox) I desire 
no communion either in this world or the next. We 
cheerfully submit." ^ And so after a holiday march 
down the Nile these beggars from the desert gained 
Egypt with its annual revenue of one hundred and 
fifty million pieces of gold.® Syria alsO' fell into 
their hands through the apostasy and treachery of 
the Christians. It was the same even in Western 
Europe ; for almost a century Spain had been seeth- 
ing with bloody conflicts between the Arians and 
the Orthodox ;'' then the Arabs came and marched 
gaily through the land. "It was not war," said one 
of them, "it was more like the Judgment Day." 

I venture then to put this theory of mine against 
the current view of the Arabs as conquering because 
"the joys of paradise were before their eyes as they 
fought."^" My own experience in war teaches me 
that soldiers on the battle-field are toO' busy tO' be 
thinking much about "black-eyed girls" in the spirit 
world. 

Nor is this view of the wreck of Oriental Chris- 
tianity a mere digression. It reveals by contrast 
the ennobling influence of Catholicism upon the bar- 
barian conquerors of Western Europe. To the rude 
warriors of Clovis, fierce, passionate, hating re- 
straint, this Catholic ideal of dependence, resigna- 
tion, gentleness seemed something really divine — 

173 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

light from another world. "For man needs in his 
religion the converse of himself, not himself again.'^^ 
And so very slowly, by an education not completed 
for centuries, European barbarism awoke to the con- 
ception of the Infinite, and there is hardly anything 
of real value in our modern life that did not have its 
origin in that awakening. 

III. Sacrifice and the Priesthood 

The Catholic doctrine of sacrifice was an attempt 
to solve the great problem of man's co-operation 
with the Infinite in the work of salvation. Doubt- 
less the solution was not altogether complete and 
satisfactory. Human wisdom is inadequate for such 
a task : for we are insufficiently acquainted even 
with ourselves, the finite factors; and concerning 
the Infinite, we are and must forever remain like 
Newton, little children picking up pebbles upon the 
shores of an illimitable ocean. But though all 
difficulties may not be removed they may be reduced 
to a minimum. And in this respect the Catholic doc- 
trine was an incomparable advance upon all that 
had gone before. 

Classical SacriUce. In the first place, Catholicism 
extirpates the classical and savage view of sacrifice 
as a merelv commercial transaction — an exchange 
of goods between God and man. Thus the gods 
were lowered to the level of man — except for the 
dubious pre-eminence of immortality. As Aristotle 
taught : "The gods are immortal men and men are 

174 



THE CATHOLIC RELIGION 

mortal gods." In fine, the idea of the Infinite was 
annihilated. 

But Catholicism shunned this pit. It remembered 
indeed that man was made in the image of God ; but 
it also remembered the vast difference between the 
image and the reality. And so it gave to man — to 
the individual worshipper — a minor and most in- 
conspicuous part in the work of salvation through 
sacrifice. Possibly it minimized the human factor 
too much, but of this later. At any rate it kept 
firm hold of its faith in man's dependence upon the 
Infinite. 

In the second place, Catholic sacrificialism escaped 
the error into which India fell. As we have seen, 
India lost the conception of the Infinite as self- 
sacrificing and substituted for it a merely negative 
conception — the absence of all limits. But the in- 
evitable result thereof is the absorption of all things 
finite into the Infinite. That alone really exists ; 
the world is but Maya or illusion; human souls are 
but shadowy reflections of the Infinite self cast upon 
some magic mirror. 

This idealistic pantheism enchained India and in 
our Western life it is still one of the two^ great 
strongholds of unbelief. The conception of separate 
and free creatures we are told,^" "militates against 
God's infinitude. Man and the world are separate 
from Him and in so far as they have independent 
existence must be held to limit him. He is no longer 
all that is." And yet how simple and incontrovert- 
ible the answer to this special pleading. It has 

175 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

already been given but may well be repeated here as 
follows : 

Self-imposed limitation of activity does not nec- 
essarily entail any limitation of pozver. 

Catholicism saw that, and seeing it was saved 
from these pantheistic and illusionist vagaries 
which engulfed the religion of India. And thus 
it was enabled, through a thousand years of toil, 
to instill into European thought the conception of 
the true Infinite — not a mere negation, not Brahma 
in "dreamless sleep" — but the self-sacrificing Cause 
of all/' 

The Priesthood. "The glory of the Sacramjcnt," 
says Aquinas, "does not lie in the partaking there- 
of, but in the consecrating of the elements." ^^ In 
that simple sentence we have the secret of the 
wondrous power and prestige of the mediaeval 
priesthood. In Pagan times the priest had been 
little more than the janitor of a temple or a "medi- 
cine man," roaming through Germanic forests. But 
now he had risen prodigiously. Day by day he 
worked an ineffable miracle before the eyes of ador- 
ing multitudes ; the civil law bound him not ; to him 
belonged all the learning of the age and a great 
part of its more tangible treasures. 

But the emoluments and honors were not beyond 
the services rendered. As another has said : "The 
presence of the Infinite, whether to an individual 
or a race, is brought at a great cost. ^ * * Through 
this seh'a osciira lay the path from ancient to modern 

176 



THE CATHOLIC RELIGION 



civilisation and few will be disposed to assert with 
Rousseau and Gibbon that the cost was greater 
than the gain." ^^ 

~\ 
IV. Faith in Immortality 

Here also a grand transformation was wrought 
in European thought and life. The doubt or at 
best the dim, waning hope of immortality which 
hovered over classical and Germanic life was re- 
placed by a true Oriental assurance of faith. As 
in the East so now in the West existence after death 
was accepted as an axiom. Mark though that 
Catholicism, unlike Pythagoras and Plato, gave no 
credence to those wild dreams of metempsychosis 
in which India revelled. It discarded them just as 
it had discarded pantheismi and illusionism; but 
the underlying conviction of immortality went un- 
disturbed and unquestioned. As in India so in the 
Middle Ages even the boldest heresies did not cast 
off this ingrained assurance of immortality. The 
vision of eternity hung like another sky over all 
mediaeval life. It made kings tremble. It turned 
the flames of martyrdom, into a bed of roses. It was 
the theme of a Dante and the inspiration of a 
Michel Angelo. It was the sunshine and the storm 
under which all human powers developed. 

Other Worldliness. But have I not here under- 
mined my own theory? Does not this extreme en- 
grossment with futurity shatter my conception of 

177 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

medisevalism as retrospective rather than prospec- 
tive, engrossed with causes and indifferent to re- 
sults? Not in the least. On the contrary, it is a sig- 
nal proof of the very highest inductive type; for, we 
shall turn this seeming exception into another in- 
stance of the universal law. And at the same time 
we shall break in pieces one of the most familiar 
and deadly weapons used by modern skepticism and 
worldliness. 

For this mediaeval faith in immortality was made 
possible only through faith in the Infinite Cause. 
It rose when that rose and fell when that fell; it 
was a reflection from the latter increasing not de- 
stroying or dwarfing its power. Therefore this 
mediaeval vision of eternity was the direct opposite 
to mere engrossment with results ; for, that degrades 
causality, disregards all causes except in so far as 
they may be used as means for the attaining of our 
desires. 

But all this is hidden from those who talk glibly 
about "other worldliness" as being but another form 
of selfishness. It is unhappily true that human 
hopes of a future existence have often been su- 
premely selfish ; but such hopes inevitably fade like 
flowers cut from their stem. The only abiding faith 
in immortality is that rooted in humble, unselfish 
recognition of man's dependence upon the Infinite. 

Such apparent exceptions form the best test of 
a true induction. The mediaeval faith in im- 
mortality was indestructible because it was not a 
mere engrossment with results, but derived from 

178 



THE CATHOLIC RELIGION 

and dependent upon that emphasis upon causality in 
which all the life and thought of the Middle Ages 
were rooted. 

NOTES 

1 Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, 338; W. Miiller, System der Alt- 

deutschen Religion, 450; Ozanam, Les Germains avant le Chris- 
tianisme, 73. 

2 De Bell, Gall. V. 21. 

^ Meyer, Jv.diciares Institutions, 37. 

* Bury, Hist. Later Roman Empire, I. 34. 

^ Hilari fragmenta, III. fol. 1314. "Novam legem introducere puta- 
verunt ut Orientales episcopi ab Occidentalibus judicarentur." 
Mohler, Athanasius, II. 75. 

* Max Miiller, Last Essays, Second Series, 240 seq. 
'' Gibbon, Hist. Rom. Empire, VI. 332. 

^ In sitating the revenue thus, I have struck an average between the 
different accounts. 

* Bury, Hist. Later Rom. Empire, II. 267. 

1" Ibid, II. 270. In this and a previous quotation I mean nothing 
invidious towards a really able writer. He merely slips into a 
stock sentiment among historians. 

1^ Townsend, Asia and Europe, 70. Townsend has thus casually worked 
out for himself a glimpse of my theory. 

^2 Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, II'. 129. 

1' Deussen, Philosophy of the Upanishads, 50. 

''■*■ Summa Theologiae. Cf. Ranke, Hist. Reformation, 116. 

1^ Bury, Later Roman Empire, I. 16. 



179 



CHAPTER 11 

MEDIAEVAL MORALITY 

I. Asceticism 

The Moral Order. We have seen the funda- 
mental defect in all ancient ethics whether of the 
West or the East. In Western or classical morality 
the conviction of any moral order of the world has 
virtually vanished. The idea of causality has so 
faded that the Infinite is regarded merely as the un- 
limited, therefore the formless and repulsive. Un- 
der such conditions the belief in the moral order of 
the universe could survive only as a vague, unac- 
countable emotion — a dim feeling which Greek art 
veiled in artistic forms, and Stoic rhetoric hid under 
that most ambiguous and question-begging- of all 
phrases, "the natural." Thus morality was left 
without any really logical basis. "The dear city of 
Zeus" of which we hear so much, was a city built 
upon a fog-bank of mere emotion. 

In the ethics of India the defect was exactly op- 
posite but equally fatal. There we have a quench- 
less faith in a moral order which "makes for 
righteousness" with all the power of infinitude. But 
this belief in the Infinite has lost out of its one su- 

i8o 



MEDIAEVAL MORALITY 

prenie quality, that of self-sacrificing love; and with- 
out this quality — as it has been one of my main 
purposes to prove — it is impossible to logically main- 
tain the idea of an infinite cause or of any true 
cause whatsoever. And so the Indian vision of the 
moral order shrivelled into that of an endless series 
of rebirths. Thus by a strange and awful per- 
version the hope of salvation has become a cry for 
deliverance from the moral order of the world. 

But Christianity has restored the revelation — 
given germinally, as I maintain, in the very nature 
of human thought — that God is love. It has re- 
stored that revelation so clearly, signed and sealed 
it in so divine a manner, that it can nevermore be 
lost. 

Human Freedom. Of course there is much that 
tends to obscure this revelation. But Catholicism 
greatly checked these obscuring forces when despite 
its reverence for St. Augustine's authority, it clung 
to the fundamental fact that man is free. For if 
we believe in freedom the so-called problem of moral 
evil seems to me to rest upon little more than quib- 
bling\^ Not even omnipotence could make man 
free, that is, make it possible for him to do wrong 
and at the same time make it impossible for him to 
do wrong. 

The Basis of Morality. Such then is the Chris- 
tian basis of morality — the will of an infinite, holy, 
self-sacrificing God. It cannot be denied that such 
a conception places a very deep and wide gulf be- 
tween the ideal and the actual. On the one side is 

i8i 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

the Holy Will seeking to draw men into a likeness 
unto Himself, offering to them the power "to be- 
come the sons of God." On the other side, is the 
actual man, selfish, passionate, sensual, with a deep- 
rooted aversion to obeying the Divine Will, which 
certainly comes very close to enmity. It was the 
full, clear recognition of this awful chasm between 
the actual and the ideal, the natural and the spiritual 
which gave rise to Catholic asceticism. 

Oriental Asceticism. How far away the modern 
mind is as yet from any real science of history is 
well evidenced by the ordinary historical treatment 
of this subject of asceticism. The very word has 
an evil sound to the modern ear ; it suggests nothing 
but repulsiveness and absurdity; there seems no 
suspicion that it, like every other wide-ruling theory 
of life, must have its lights as well as shades. For 
example, the eminent historian of European Morals 
has devoted almost a hundred pages to a recital of 
the horrible tortures inflicted upon themselves, by 
the anchorites of Egypt and Asia Minor. But sud- 
denly the curtain falls upon these horrors and rises 
upon a picture of the m.edia&val monk as he was in 
Western Europe. He is "invested with the aureole 
of a sacred poverty." Before him are "boundless 
vistas of missionary zeal and labors." His profes- 
sion was "the open road to heaven; also the portal 
to bishoprics and frequently to the Popedom." It 
was the sole opportunity then existing in the world 
for a life of study. At the same time "the monk 
taught to the idle savages around him the holy 

182 



MEDIAEVAL MORALITY 

lessons of labor." His retreat " often became the 
nucleus of a city. It was the centre of civilisation 
and industry, the symbol of moral power in an age 
of turbulence and war." ^ 

Such are the two scenes, the Asiatic and African 
detailed at great length, the European curtly out- 
lined in a page or two. But of the contrast between 
them the historian seems hardly conscious, at least 
he makes no attempt to explain it. Nor does any 
other historian so far as known to me.^ And yet 
to those who remember what was said in the pre- 
vious chapter the explanation is evident. Egypt and 
Asia Minor had been steeped in asceticism from 
time immemorial; it could do nothing for them 
except to drag them deeper into depths where they 
had been sinking for centuries. But to the free, 
proud fighting savages of Western Europe, Catholic 
asceticism was a mighty regenerating power, be- 
cause it brought to them what they needed most, 
taught them golden lessons of self-sacrifice, 
humility, obedience, surrender to the unseen and the 
Infinite. 

Catholic Asceticism. It is so important to under- 
stand fully this mediaeval asceticism that it may be 
well to specify its two main differences from all 
other ascetic types. 

First, Indian asceticism conceived of the moral 
order as a cruel bondage from which it despair- 
ingly seeks deliverance. But Catholic asceticism 
conceives it as a Holy Will and seeks not for deliv- 
erance therefrom, but for forgiveness and recon- 

183 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

ciliation. Secondly, this Catholic type is instinct 
with the true conception of self-sacrifice not as self- 
torture but as effort for another. "Such asceticism 
has a spirit of love pervading it which softens its 
sternness, removes everything repellent and un- 
gracious and so produces what we might call the 
purest quintessence of human feeling." * 

11. The Moral Standard 

Such then is the basis of morality — the holy Will 
of the Infinite, loving cause. That proposition is 
but a repetition of the almost unanimous belief of 
the Christian world in all ages. The only merit 
that I can claim is to have shown that this belief is 
something more than a mere intuition, one of those 
instinctive beliefs which we are mysteriously com- 
pelled to accept without knowing why. On the con- 
trar}", it is the most absolutely verifiable of all be- 
liefs, since its denial involves the utter extinction 
of all thought. For all thinking is a relating of 
cause and effect ; and the only final, fully satisfactory 
conception of a cause is infinite activity exerted for 
the sake of others. 

The Ethical Code. Morality, then, has an im- 
movable basis; we are rationally bound to obey an 
infinite — not arbitrary but loving Will ; to disobey is 
rebellion against God and His goodness. And so 
we come to the next great question : What is the 
moral standard ? What is the code of duties which 
He imposes upon us? 

184 



MEDIAEVAL MORALITY 

The mediceval answer was that the code is given 
by divine revelation. But that answer seems to me 
insufficient for at least two reasons : first, the Gos- 
pel does not claim to give a complete code but only 
the germ thereof in a few great principles ; second, 
and much more important; even if we suppose a 
code divinely revealed some means of interpreting it 
are still requisite. The moral differences of dif- 
ferent ages and races are largely due to the special 
stress laid upon different principles or parts of the 
same code ; precepts that seem of overwhelming im- 
portance to one ag^e, seem secondary and even trivial 
to another. 

And just here medieval ethics was most defective. 
It did not rightly estimate the relative importance 
of the virtues according to their results upon the 
welfare and happiness of mankind. It placed too 
great a value upon the formalities of religion, ortho- 
dox belief, the scruples of piety, too little upon those 
great practical virtues, upon which the very exist- 
ence of society depends. 

Justice. The principle of justice, for example, 
was almost as much neglected in the Middle Ages 
as in India. A striking proof thereof was the long 
persistence of slavery. The sentiment against hu- 
man bondage was widely prevalent, but it was to a 
great extent neutralized by the ascetic view of all 
mundane conditions as equally wretched and by 
that reverence for ancient institutions and fixed 
order which the retrospective impulse fosters. And 
so as late as the ninth century we find Christian 

185 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

leaders condemning flight from bondage as a mortal 
sin and denying the rites of the church to the fugi- 
tives.^ 

Veracity. Truthfulness also did not receive that 
attention which its importance demanded. Even 
some of the Christian Fathers deemed it no sin "to 
deceive the enemies of religion." And in mediaeval 
literature mendacity seems to be absurdly chronic. 
Doubtless, however, too much has been madeof these 
preposterous legends which were doubtless due more 
to ignorance and superstition than to contempt 
for truth. Still it cannot be denied that in the later 
Middle Ages there was a growing tendency to en- 
force uniformity of belief and to make honest search 
after the truth very difficult and dangerous. In 
earlier times it was not soo. St. Francis, for exam- 
ple, was always "exceedingly critical of the eccles- 
iastical system and in favor of individual liberty in 
thought and life." ® But in later times truth was 
not so precious as it was to this prince of mediaeval 
mystics. 

III. Ascetic Humanitarianism 

We see then in mediasvalism a certain inattention 
to practical results which caused real progress to be 
always slow and often very dubious. This defect 
becomes still more obvious when we turn from 
the special virtues to a more general view of the 
Catholic ideal as a whole. 

The Love of Humanity. The ideal was certainly 
i86 



MEDIAEVAL MORALITY 

a sublime one. Mediaeval morality ascribed an in- 
finite value to the human soul, it lifted high above 
all other virtues, that of universal charity. Of such 
conceptions there is hardly a hint in classical ethics ; 
the "human brotherhood" of the later Stoicism is 
but a universal companionship in suffering, not even 
relieved by that Epicurean tinge of hopefulness 
which beautifies the poetry of Lucretius and which 
we have found tO' be characteristic of the best Greek 
and Roman life.^ And even in Hindu ethics the 
love of mankind is swallowed up in a vaster but 
whimsical charity for all living creatures ; and it 
was further vitiated, perverted into mere pity by 
that pessimism into which Indian thought finally 
sank. 

But mediaeval ism preserved its sublime ideal — the 
human brotherhood and the coming kingdom of 
God — full and radiant as it came from the lips of 
Jesus. It is one thing, however, to cherish an ideal 
descended from the past; it is quite another thing 
to look forward, to devise methods, to work for the 
realization of that ideal. And just there, it seems 
to me, lies the chief defect of mediaeval morals. 
For, to rely upon religious rites, correct beliefs and 
emotional crises for the realization of this ideal 
seems very much like reliance upon the magical. 
Reason cannot discover and experience appears to 
deny that there is any necessary connexion between 
the means and the end to be realized. 

Among all the many verifications of our thesis 
there is none more striking and conclusive than this. 

187 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

On the one side we have the Infinite Love of God 
co-operating with an innumerable host of immortal 
spirits, for the coming of His kingdom on earth; 
that is the emphasis upon causality. Upon the other 
side, a strange lack of definite plans and practical 
endeavors for the realizing of this great ideal. 

Emphasis upon the cause and corresponding ne- 
glect of results. 

NOTES 

1 Hobliouse (Morals in Evolution, II. 132-5) quibbles thus at great length. 

It is all virtually an indictment of God as guilty of all our wrong- 
doing, because he has made us free. 

2 Lecky, Hist. European Morals, II. 194-5. 

s Except Adams (Civilisation during the Middle Ages, 134) who ascribes 
it "to the Western organising and legal genius." But that genius 
is altogether mythical, and secondly, even if actual it would not 
explain the contrast. 

* Caird, Evolution of Religion, II. 290. Also Hutton, English Saints, 

80 seq. 
■•Carlyle, Hist Mediaeval Political Theory in the West, 204 seq. 

* Creighton, Historical Lecttires and Addresses, 109. Also p. 90 and 

32-33- 
■? Book II. Chap. I. Sec. 4. 



188 



CHAPTER III 

MEDIAEVAL SCIENCE 

I. Relation to Previous Epochs 

As was stated at the close of the preceding chap- 
ter, there is an exact correspondence between the 
mediaeval view oi the moral order and of the physical 
order of the world. The same emphasis upon 
causality which led to a profound insight into the 
basis of morality led also to an equally profound 
insight into the basis of physical science. The same 
inattention to results which prevented the formation 
of a complete and rounded system of ethics, also 
prevented the formation of the physical sciences. 
It is these two facts which we have now to prove. 

India and Greece. No one in this age will deny 
that the basis of all physical science is the conviction 
of the absolute invariability of all natural processes. 
And we have seen that India's emphasis upon caus- 
ality led her to make this conviction the one pivot 
upon which her whole intellectual and moral life 
revolved. But there is no reason for supposing that 
the Middle Ages borrowed this view from India. 
The classical philosophers began borrowing from In- 
dia as early as 500 B.C., but they never appropriated 

189 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

this doctrine of invariability ;^ for them nature was a 
medley of law and chance or accident; even the 
atoms of Lucretius spontaneously deviate from their 
courses. And the Christian ages were still less likely 
to borrow this doctrine from India, for there it was 
clothed in a drapery which horrified Christians. 

The Science of Jesus. Furthermore there was 
no need of borrowing; for, from the very first this 
conviction of invariability had vibrated through 
every nerve of Christian faith. The love of nature 
shown by Jesus is a mere connmonplace ; but so far 
as I know, no one has noted the recognition in 
Jesus' sayings, of every one of the essential elements 
in the modern, scientific conception of invariability. 
First, there is full recognition of perfect exactitude ; 
the very hairs of your head are numbered; not a 
sparrow falleth to the ground, etc. Second, in- 
finitude recognised in his law of retribution and in 
his comparison between the lily and "Solomon in all 
his glory" ; third, absolute impartiality, the sun ris- 
ing and the rain falling on the just and the unjust; 
fourth, the evolutionary element, the leaven in the 
loaf, and the mustard-seed. No element of the 
scientific conception is wanting. And if it is ob- 
jected that these things are dimly suggested rather 
than openly expressed, let it be remembered that 
the treasures of the Gospel are like the resources 
of Nature, not exposed by the wayside, but left to 
be dug out of their hiding-places whenever man be- 
comes capable of using them. 

St. Augustine. Christian monotheism, then, 
190 



MEDIAEVAL SCIENCE 

from its very beginning was instinct with a true 
scientific insight into^ the general character of all 
natural processes. All things have their origin in 
the workings of one infinite, self-sacrificing Cause; 
and hence all natural processes are immutable, im- 
partial and evolutionary. The master-mind of St. 
Augustine, in his "City of God," has unfolded this 
view with a wonderful felicity.^ God, he says, has 
everywhere impressed on nature regularity, beauty 
and order ; He has caused everything in the physical 
world to happen according tO' number, weight and 
measure; He has not left even the entrails of the 
smallest, meanest living creature, the feather of a 
bird, the little flower of a plant or the leaf of a tree, 
without its exquisite harmony of parts. Of that 
view, as I now hope to show, the scholastic philoso- 
phy of the Middle Ages was the systematic develop- 
ment. 

II. Scholasticism 

The very heart of scholasticism as all will con- 
cede was its doctrine that universals are real. Aris- 
totle, that representative mind among the Greeks, 
vigorously combated the doctrine ascribed to Plato 
that the universals had an existence independent of 
things in some mystic realm of their own; but 
whether Plato seriously taught that will never be 
known on account of the poetic character of his 
philosophy and the changes it underwent at different 
periods of his life; nor is the decision of this point at 
all material for our purpose. At any rate, Aristotle 

191 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

substituted for it his own theory that universals 
existed only in things, in rem. In other words, uni- 
versals are those "occult qualities" which play so 
grand a part in the Aristotelic physics : bodies fall, 
for example, because they have the quality of heavi- 
ness inherent within them ; other bodies rise because 
they have in them the quality of levity. Such loose 
generalizations or rather mere identical propositions 
satisfied the defective sense of causality in this repre- 
sentative Greek mind. 

But the great thinkers of the Middle Ages, with 
their profound sense of causality, were not satisfied 
with these shallow generalizations and purely verbal 
explanations. They had an immense reverence for 
Aristotle. Like the thinkers of India, they had to 
have some authority on which to rest and they had 
taken Aristotle partly because his writings had 
been made accessible through x\rabic learning and 
partly because they shrank from Platonism in its 
pantheistic or Alexandrian form. But concerning 
this doctrine of universals, scholasticism, despite its 
Oriental submissiveness to authority, rebelled. Uni- 
versals, it was afiirmed, exist not only in things, but 
before things, ante rem. They w^ere not mere oc- 
cult qualities in things, but eternal laws, immutable 
types, invariable processes of causation upon which 
things depended. Above all they existed as ideas 
in the Divine Mind ; and according to Thomas 
Aquinas they were of the essence of God.^ 

And this mediaeval realism was certainly an im- 
measurable advance upon Aristotle's view of the 

192 



MEDIAEVAL SCIENCE 

concept or universal as indicating only an "occult 
quality" in things. It opened the way tO' the scien- 
tific view of phenomena as the results of absolutely 
invariable processes of causation. The redness of 
the rose, for example, is due not solely tO' something 
within it, but to something beyond and before it — 
to an inconceivably complex process of causation in 
which the flaming atoms of the sun, the aether waves 
and the little rose are factors. 

But are these processes realities? I answer that 
they are not real in the vulgar sense of being like 
things. But they are real in the sense of being the 
immutable methods of an infinite activity without 
which sensible things could not exist. 

Whey then did the Middle Ages accomplish so 
little in scientific reseach? Our answer can best be 
given by a brief glance at the one branch of physical 
research that in those times was pursued with some 
degree of ardor. 

III. Alchemy 

Alchemistic studies seemed to have a peculiar 
fascination for the mediseval intellect. Even the 
sober-minded Aquinas * devoted himself with a good 
deal of ardor to- such investigations. His great 
rival, Albertus Magnus, wrote a treatise upon metals 
and was the first, so far as known, to develop the 
idea of chemical affinity in the modern sense of the 
term." It may be well to note as another indication 
of the special impulse dominating the Middle Ages, 

193 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

that alchemy was entirely of Oriental origin; it was 
unknown in classical Greece or Rome." 

Nor was this alchemistic study altogether profit- 
less. It opened the way to modern chemistry. As 
has been well said the theory of the three principles 
which it substituted for the classical doctrine of the 
four elements sheds the first ray of light upon the 
chemical constitution of bodies. To Paracelsus, 
greatest of the alchemists, the first school of real 
chemistry traces its origin. 

Lack of the Critical and Verifying Spirit. But 
beyond this vague foreshadowing of what was to 
be worked out in the far future, mediccval research 
could accomplish but little. The instinct to gen- 
eralize is universal and so almost from the start the 
human mind gets encrusted over with a mass of 
crude empirical beliefs to which it clings with all 
the tenacity that pride and ignorance can furnish. 
To break through that hard crust demands a revolu- 
tionary spirit. Consider, for example, the first law 
of motion, the elementary principle of all modern 
science; what a rude shock it was to the vulgar 
prejudice that had never failed to see motions grad- 
ually decreasing and finally coming to an end with- 
out an)^ apparent cause. And so everywhere — in 
astronomy, in physics, in chemistry — the first revela- 
tions of physical science seem to revolutionize every- 
thing; and to the revolutionary spirit medisevalism 
was unalterably opposed. 

Again, mediseval faith abhorred the verifying 
spirit, that cold, skeptical insistence upon proof so 

194 



MEDIAEVAL SCIENCE 

indispensable to science. In a word, mediaevalism 
hated the scientific method. 

Roger Bacon. The career of Roger Bacon seems 
to be the perfect mirror of the fate of science in the 
Middle Ages. A man, sublime in genius and still 
more in his life, so devoted to observation and ex- 
periment that he counted "experience the queen of 
all the sciences and the end of all speculation,"^ so 
scornful of authority that he even wished that all 
the books of Aristotle were burned,* so critical and 
exact in his methods that five hundred years before 
Kant he had discovered that nothing was scientific 
unless it was mathematically verified ^ — he com- 
bined all those high qualities through which modern 
science has gained its victories. And yet for no 
other fault than these qualities he was held a pris- 
oner in his cell for almost a quarter of a century. 
What could more fully picture the mediaeval an- 
tipathy to the scientific method? 

The same qualities re-appear in his philosophic 
views. He very freely criticised the scholastic real- 
ism of his age ; but at the same time he was very far 
from being a Nominalist, much less a vapid Con- 
ceptual ist.^" More than any other thinker down to 
the present day, I think, he had divined the great 
truth which scholastic realism only vaguely and par- 
tially expressed; to wit, that the universal or con- 
cept, in its deepest, most essential meaning, signifies 
an invariable process of causation. 

Bacon, then, despite his zeal for free inquiry and 
scorn of authority, was a true son of the Middle 

195 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

Ages. I pass over many other corroborating proofs 
of this, but must dwell for a moment upon one of 
extreme significance — his bitter and persistent 
hatred of the Roman civil law which the kings were 
already striving to substitute for the customary and 
canon law of Western Europe. Bacon foresaw in 
this new policy adopted from the old Roman Em- 
pire, the ruin and overthrow of all that medisevalism 
regarded as most sacred and precious. The intro- 
duction of the civil law, he said, "will put an end 
to all religion and true wisdom and the peace of the 
world will be destroyed."" 

Coming events, we are told, cast their shadows 
before; and Bacon's gloomy career was a dark 
shadow of that scientific movement which as yet 
was far-away in the future. For in his genius the 
two world-impulses had reached a sort of unstable 
equilibrium. On the one hand, he is fully imbued 
with the mediaeval tendency to emphasize causality ; 
he never forgets that "the end of all true philosophy 
is to aim at a knowledge of the Creator through 
knowledge of the created world." ^^ Thus he em- 
bodied the mediaeval conception "of a world ruled 
by order, a world ruled by law, and that is the 
fundamental postulate of modern science." ^^ But 
on the other hand, he has also the Greek and modern 
spirit of free inquiry — the scorn of authority, fear- 
less criticism and unwearied observation of results. 
Thus he combines the two impulses, the one crea- 
tive of the true scientific aim, the other creative of 
the true scientific method. But the latter the Middle 

196 



MEDIAEVAL SCIENCE 



Ages did not love; and so they kept Bacon in chains. 
And for the same reason they failed in science. 



NOTES 

>• Plato's "eternal" ideas form no exception, as I have shown. 

^ De Civitate Dei, V. i. 

^ Prantl, Gesch. d. Logik, III. 115, asi to Aquinas' position. Also upon 
Albert consult Haureau, Philos. Scolastique, II. 98. It is even 
doubtful whether Abelard's so-called conceptualism was more than a 
qualified realism: see Kaulich, Gesch. d. Scolast. Philos. 1. 393. 
Consult -also Staudenmaier, Scotus Erigena, I. 414. 

* Hoefer, Hist, de la Chitnie, I. 369. 

" Ihid, 385. "Propter affinitatem naturae metalla adurit." 

* Kopp, Gesch. d. Chemie, 30. 

' Opus Tertium, Cap. XII. Brewer, p. 43. Also, Opus Magnum, 448. 
8 Compendium Studii, Cap. VIII. p. 469. 

* "Et sic potest ostendi quod nihil in rebus sciri potest sine geome- 

tric potestate." Opus Mag., 66. 
1*" Charles, Roger Bacon, 202. 
11 Opus Tertium, Cap. XXII. 

'^^ Adamson, Philosophy of Science in Middle Ages, 20, 
''-* Iverach, Descartes and Spina sa, 6-7. 



197 



CHAPTER IV 

MEDIAEVAL ART 

I. The Love of Nature 

We have seen that medi^vaHsm estabHshed in 
European thought the basis of all scientific knowl- 
edge, to wit : the conviction that the processes of 
natural causation are infinitely perfect and immuta- 
ble; but on account of its repugnance tO' scientific 
methods, it was not able to distinctly define, to 
formulate under mathematical laws these processes. 
But art does not demand this stringency and mathe- 
matical exactitude; on the contrary, its very mis- 
sion is to dimly suggest to sesthetic feeling what as 
yet is not distinctly disclosed and formulated by 
science. Hence came that true Oriental love of na- 
ture, that delight in the beauty, the order and har- 
mony of her processes which runs like a thread of 
gold through the art of the Middle Ages. 

The Greek Fathers. This sentiment for nature, 
as we have seen, was lacking in classical art, except 
for some faint signs of it in the poetry of the 
Alexandrine period when Greek thought was yield- 
ing to Oriental influences. But it revealed itself 
fully and with power wherever the Catholic em- 

198 



MEDIAEVAL ART 

phasis upon causality or dependence had begun its 
transforming, regenerating work. Its first stirrings 
are plainly discernible in the writings of the Greek 
Fathers. "When," says Gregory of Nyssa for in- 
stance, "I see every ledge of rock, every valley and 
plain covered with new-born verdure, the varied 
beauty of the trees, and of the lilies at my feet 
decked with the double charm of perfume and color, 
when in the distance I see the ocean towards which 
the clouds are borne, my spirit is overwhelmed by a 
sadness not wholly devoid of enjoyment. When in 
Autumn the fruits have passed away, the leaves 
fallen and the branches of the tree dried and shriv- 
elled are robbed of their leafy adornments, we are 
instinctively led amidst the everlasting and regular 
change in creation to- feel the harmony of the won- 
drous power pervading all things."^ 

It is easy to see the kinship of such a passage as 
this with the Oriental love of nature; but there is 
need of guarding against a possible error. Many 
writers have been inclined to interpret Christianity 
as a synthesis or blending of Oriental and classical 
elements. That view seems to me a delusion, and 
I find in the Alexandrian poetry referred to above, a 
precise image of what such a synthesis would bring 
forth. The Alexandrian poet has made such a syn- 
thesis; he has borrowed something of the Oriental 
sentiment for nature; but after all he has only the 
shell, the real heart and life of that sentiment has 
escaped him. "In his effort to draw closer to nature 
and imbibe her influences, he does not like the 

199 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

Oriental or modern poet surrender himself unre- 
servedly to the dominion of the outer world. He 
does not feel the pulsation of a larger life of which 
the human soul is but a fragment or strive to catch 
in the grander or more solitary scenes of nature 
mysterious voices and intimations of something 
higher than man." " On the contrary, it is the 
human individual and bis feelings — generally of 
an erotic cast — that form the centre of interest : 
nature is but the background. Instead of seeking 
to interpret nature, the poet is merely a sympathetic 
spectator of his own emotions. There is no sug- 
gestion of a spiritual reality that lies behind the 
show of things; the universe is not an emblem of 
the invisible to be deciphered.^ 

Therein we have a case of synthesis ; the Greek 
comes under the influence of Orientals and borrows 
from them, but he remains triumphantly Greek to 
the last. The relation between the mediaeval and 
the Oriental love of nature, however, is that of real 
kinship; neither has borrowed from the other, but 
both are afiiliated products of the same intense em- 
phasis upon causality or dependence. 

Germanic Sentiment. The love of nature does 
not manifest itself in the poetry of Northern Europe 
until after the Catholic regeneration. Few if any 
traces of it are to be found in the earlier epic poetry, 
that salvage from the wreck of paganism ; * but 
they abound in the lays of the Minnesangers, the 
poets of Catholicism and chivalry. And yet the 
vanity of Teutons has led some of them to imagine 

200 



MEDIAEVAL ART 

that the modern love of nature sprang from a special 
virtue innate in Teutonic blood. 

Animal and Plant Life. One notable sign of the 
growing sentiment for nature in the Middle Ages 
is the popularity of the animal Epos. This kind of 
composition wherein animals are the chief person- 
ages in a truly epical narrative was unknown among 
the Greeks and Romans/ but has alwa3^s been very 
common in the East. And in the Middle Ages it 
became an unfailing source of delight all over West- 
ern Europe. The best specimen, the Romance of 
Reynard the Fox, gained an even wider vogue and 
was even more assiduously cultivated in France 
than in Germany. Evidently the Oriental conviction 
of the unity of life had taken a strong hold upon 
the Western imagination.^ 

In another cognate type of literature, plant life 
became the centre of poetic interest. Its most 
famous specimen, the Romance of the Rose, where- 
in a rose occupies the same position that the city 
of Troy does in the Iliad, gained an unexampled 
success, was translated into many languages and 
everywhere received with extravagant delight.'^ And 
not only in the stately form of these epical alle- 
gories,^ but in the simple homely songs of the com- 
mon people this same deep, mystical passion for 
nature is displayed : "a single picture reveals some- 
times the kinship of all living beings, as for instance, 
the image of the linden tree which is mourning with 
the deserted maiden." ® 

St. Francis and Dante. This poetic sentiment, 
20 1 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

this Oriental sense of the unity and common de- 
pendence of all life was less developed in Italian 
literature. But the surest scientific tests of a gen- 
eral law are always the apparent exceptions to it, 
its quantitative variations; and so we shall con- 
sider this Italian peculiarity at the close of the 
chapter. Sufhce it now that the noblest Italians, 
those whose genius rose above local peculiarities 
into full communion with the spirit of the Middle 
Ages, were passionate lovers of nature. Think of 
St. Francis for example. Who has not heard of his 
sermon to the birds? "My brother sparrows and 
my sister sparrows, please be still for a while that 
I may preach the word of God to you;" and the 
story of his life is crowded with passages of a like 
tenor. Dante, the master-mind of the Middle 
Ages, owed much to St. Francis ; '" and he too found 
in every humble object something that made "the 
universe resemble God." 

Art. Gothic architecture also was in large degree 
a creation of the passion for nature. The still 
solemn life of the forest was mirrored in the vaulted 
aisles of the cathedral, its darkened recesses, its 
air of mystery and radiance of color. The Greek 
temple was a chiselled geometry, the Gothic cathe- 
dral a forest cut in stone. 

Society. Not only literature and art but the 
very structure of mediaeval society reveals this en- 
thusiasm for nature. The chief distinction between 
the classical and feudal regime is that the former 
is civic and the latter rural. The basis of feudal 

202 



MEDIAEVAL ART 

sovereignty is not personal but territorial. It is 
the land which gives rank and power. The land- 
less man is a serf, an appendage of the soil ; the man 
with land is a sovereign. 

Discovery. At the close of the Middle Ages 
this true naturalism had become a fixed habit of the 
European mind. Even the seamen and adventurers 
who then went forth to explore the world display 
a poetic sensibility to the charm of natural scenery 
such as the highest culture of Greece or Rome 
never attained. Evidently the mediaeval love of na- 
ture aided not a little in ushering in that grand era 
of maritime discovery which gave a new world to 
Christendom. 

II. The Special Arts 

Music. Classical art seems to have had a very 
slight knowledge of music in the fullness of its 
modern meaning. So far from the Greeks having 
practised harmony, "it remains to be proved that 
their vocal melody consisted of anything more 
strictly musical than intoning." " And even such 
rudimentary knowledge as they possessed of the 
musical quality in sounds seems to have been mainly 
derived from Oriental sources. 

Musical harmony is the gift of the Middle Ages 
to the world's art. Its discovery belongs to the same 
era as that of the pointed or Gothic arch and both 
were born of the same intellectual impulse. Both 
exemplify my law that beauty is the dim revelation 

203 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

of unity subsisting between things that outwardly 
seem most diverse. Musical harmony is the unity 
of contrasted sounds or noises; the pointed arch, 
according to Ruskin, is a unity of two contrary 
curves where the essentially curvilinear character is 
obscured by being blended with the government of 
a right line/" The one discovery stands in the 
same relation to the dull monotony of Greek inton- 
ing that the other does to the heaviness and in- 
sipidity of the Roman or semi-circular arch. 

The first known mention of harmony in the 
technical sense dates back to the times of Gregory 
the Great. But it was not until the age of the 
crusades when medisevalism was culminating, and 
majestic structures in the pointed arch style were 
rising all over Western Europe that "the art of 
descant was invented and the evolution of modern 
music was fairly under way." ^^ Thus out of the 
mediaeval regeneration rose modern music — the peo- 
ple's art. 

Gothic Architecture. We have already explained 
two main characteristics of this architecture, the 
pointed arch and the accentuation of the mediseval 
sentiment for nature. We need now only to add 
a third characteristic, by far the most significant of 
all — the harmony between the interior and the ex- 
terior. Greek architecture was limited to the outer 
form ; the exterior is of a simple but majestic beauty ; 
the interior is contracted and paltry.^* But in the 
cathedral, the exterior wonderfully reflects the 
spirit and purpose of the interior. Without, the 

204 



MEDIAEVAL ART 

perpendicular lines, the uplifted spires, the flying 
buttresses veiling their mechanical purpose behind 
an aerial beauty, the circular window with its bril- 
liant petals figuring the rose of eternity — within, the 
lofty aisles, the vaults interwoven like a forest, the 
host of attenuated columns, the dim vistas, the 
solemn shadows intermingling with radiant color, 
the maze of details fashioned from the flowers by 
the wayside — all unite to form one vast symbol 
"beginning and ending with the cross." Every- 
thing urges the imagination towards the infinite 
conceived as self-sacrificing love. The utmost striv- 
ings of man after the unity of causation find their 
artistic expression in the Gothic cathedral. 

TIL The Italian Renaissance 

The Renaissance I define as an emotional revolt 
against the mediaeval impulse. It was natural that 
such a movement should have not only its origin but 
its chief strength in Italy. The counter-impulse, 
realistic, sensuous, utilitarian, against which the 
Catholic movement was striving, was of course 
present everywhere throughout Europe. But in 
Italy this counter-impulse had been greatly strength- 
ened by those classical memories and traditions 
which seemed to cling to the very soil and by the 
commercialism stimulated through the wondrous 
growth of the Italian cities — perhaps too by closer 
acquaintance with the darker side of papal life in 
Rome — in fine, by a host of influences known and 

205 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

unknown. Hence it happened that feudaHsm there 
had but a stunted growth : in Italy, according to one 
of her most eminent historians, "feudal nobility 
resembled an exotic plant transferred to an uncon- 
genial soil."^^ And sO' in art : "the Italians failed 
to perceive the significance of Gothic art, its sym- 
bolic meaning was lost upon them.'' ^^ The strength 
of scholasticism also lay beyond the Alps; even 
Thomas Aquinas, the only Italian schoolman of the 
very first rank, was educated in the North. The 
chief universities of Italy were devoted not like 
those beyond the Alps, to theology and philosophy, 
but to medicine and Roman law — studies none too 
friendly to the Catholic regime.^' And so these 
and many other influences were continually strength- 
ening that resistant force, that counter-current of 
feeling which as mediasvalism decayed finally burst 
forth like a flood in the Renaissance movement. 

A justly celebrated historian of this period has 
maintained that "what is called the Paganism of the 
Renaissance is indigenous in Italy.''^* But as- 
suredly that cannot be proved. And this ascribing 
ofT-hand of special traits as innate in particular 
tribes or peoples is fatal to liiscory as a science^ 
What 1 seek here is to take our common humanity 
and then to show how under historically verified cir- 
cumstances but under one fundamental law, it has 
varied in this direction or in that. 

Emotionalism. Note now that the Renaissance 
was through and through an emotional movement. 
It diiTered from the Protestant movement as feeling 

206 



MEDIAEVAL ART 

differs from thought. It had no definiteness of 
principles or fixedness of purpose. The men of the 
Renaissance never really broke the bonds of that 
mediaevalism against which they raged. They seem 
to have hardly dreamed of revolting against the 
hierarchy; they merely inveigh against its corrup- 
tions and abuses with something of the same petu- 
lance with which we are apt to murmur against the 
inclemencies of the weather. When they became 
skeptics they simply put some silly superstition in 
the place of religion ; thus, one writer denies the 
divinity of Christ but thinks that he wrought his 
miracles "through the influence of the stars." Faith 
was gone but magic held its ground. ^^ 

In morals the men of the Renaissance descended 
easily to the depths of Greek sensualism; the most 
damning of all Greek vices — that against nature — 
raged "like a pestilence at that time in Italian cities, 
especially among the higher classes of society." ^^ 
But withal, they never gained the gift of Greek 
self-complacency. They were conscience-stricken; 
the terror of death pursued them; they oscillated 
between orgies of lust and paroxysms of religious 
revival. Hence came what historians have described 
as "the double mind of the Renaissance." 

Relation to the Reformation. The Renaissance 
not only differed essentially from the Reformation, 
but it hindered far more than it helped the later 
movement. Where the former was strongest the 
latter was weakest, and conversely. In Germany, for 
example, there can hardly be said to have been any 

207 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

Renaissance in the Italian sense. One generation 
at the opening of the thirteenth century had pro- 
duced four German poets who still rank among the 
immortals; after that three centuries pass "without 
a poet whose name is counted among the great 
names of history." It was exactly opposite in 
Italy; there so much energy was spent in a tumult 
of emotions that none was left for the quiet, per- 
sistent work of real reform. 



NOTES 

^ Quoted in Humboldt's Cosmos. 

" Butcher, Some Aspects of the Greek Genius, 264. 

° Ibid, 323. 

* Bunaen, God in History, III. 226. 

^ Gervinus, Gesch. d. L'eutschen Dichtung, I. 132. 

" D'Assailly, Les Chevaliers Poetes, d. I'Allemagne, 192. 

"^ Roquefort, La Poesie Francaise de le dous. et treis. Siecles, 170. 

8 The Partenoper was another famous production of the same type. See 
L'Hisioire Lit. de la France, XVI. 233. 

® Francke, Hist. German Literature, 118. 

^'' Creighton (Hist. Lectures, 191) says that St. Francis' message "lies 
at the bottom of all that was loftiest in Dante." 

iJ Hullah, History of Modern Music, 92. Helmholz (Lectures, 102) 
slightly qualifies this. 

12 Modern Painters, 275, , 

1^ Hullah, Hist. Music, 77. Grove, Dictionary of Music, I. 670. 

^* Schnaase, Gesch. d. bild Kunst, IV. 193. Die griechischen Styl 
erschopft seine Schonheit in Aeussern und vernachlassigt das Inneres 
in gothischen Styl ist dieses der vollendeten Theil und selbst das 
AeuEsers tragt das Gefrage der Innerlichkeit. Dort ist jedes Ein- 
zelnes bestimmt begrenzt; hier ist das Bestreben darauf gerichtet es 
sanft in ein anderes aufzulosen und hinuberzufahren. Also, IV. 87. 

^^ Villari, History of Florence. 

1' Symonds, Italian Literature, I. 52. 

^^ Janssen (Hist. German People, II. 168) inveighs against Roman 
Law as one of the chief foes of Catholicislm. Pastor ascribes evils 
of Renaissance to its being derived from Roman instead of Greek 
sources. He does not explain, but presumably has Roman law most' 
in mind. Pastor, History of the Popes, II. 201. 

^' Symonds, Italian Literature, I. 33 seq. 

^^ Burckhardt, Civilisaiion of the Renaissance in Italy, 502. 

2" Pastor, History of the Popes, I. 25. 

208 



CHAPTER V 

SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

I. Political Structure 

The political or external structure of mediaeval 
society is summed up in a single, familiar word — 
feudalism. But alas ! that word still remains one 
of the chief enigmas of history. Thanks to the toil 
of many noble scholars we have learned much con- 
cerning the details of the feudal system; but this 
knowledge is of a rather antiquarian or merely 
descriptive kind. But what we desire tO' know is : 
why did this peculiar system gradually uproot all 
previous ones and over-spread all Western Europe? 
That no one has told us. 

Reversal. Reasoning from mere analogies — in 
other words the fallacy of resemblance- —has been the 
chief cause of the darkening of knowledge concern- 
ing feudalism. Historians find a dim analogy be- 
tween some part of the Roman or Germanic sys- 
tem and the medijeval ; that they say is "the germ" 
or "the faint beginning;" all is explained. This 
analogical method has the merit of being very easy : 
for, there are no social systems so different as not 
to have some resemblances. But it is a most un- 

209 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

scientific method, and in the present case fatally so. 
For it hides the fundamental principle of feudalism 
which I define as follows : 

The feudal system is the entire reversal of both 
the Roman and Germanic politics. To prove this 
let us consider what are conceded to be the two 
essential features of the system. 

Feudal Sovereignty. Note first that feudal sov- 
ereignty is a curiously restricted and diffused au- 
thority; the sovereign is at the same time a subject. 
The petty lord was a sovereign within his own do- 
main, but he was also the vassal of his over-lord 
and the latter was the vassal of some still higher 
power and so on indefinitely. The king or emperor, 
on his part, had but the shadow of authority; the 
substance thereof was diffused among the inferior 
lords. Thus feudal sovereignty was everywhere 
dominated by the principle of dependence and sub- 
ordination ; it was a complicated system of reciprocal 
duties rather than of distinct and sovereign rights. 

Both in theory and in practice medisevalism denied 
the sovereignty of the state. The state, according 
to St. Augustine,^ would never have existed but 
for Adam's fall. "Kingship," said Gregory VII., "is 
the invention of those who in ignorance of God 
and by the instigation of the devil have presumed 
to tyrannise over their equals."" And so well did 
the church maintain this theory that in the opinion of 
some, England was the only really sovereign state 
in Europe up to the very close of the Middle Ages. 

Thus the medireval emphasis upon dependence 

2X0 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

has transformed the idea of sovereignty; the an- 
cients conceived it as an absolute right, the Middle 
Ages as a system, a hierachy of duties. But a still' 
greater transformation was wrought when the basis 
of sovereignty became territorial instead of per- 
sonal. The land was made the source of rank and 
political authority." As one of the greatest his- 
torians has said, "the land had become the sacra- 
mental tie of all political relations."^ In that happy 
phrase we see the intensity, the religious power of 
that nature-love which, as already shown, thrilled 
the heart of the Middle Ages. They believed, as 
Albertus Magnus expressed it, that the image of 
God, His love and power were as really present in 
the brute earth as with man or the angels.^ "He 
has willed that His perfections should go to the 
very depths of creation." ^ And so there arose a 
great reverence for the land as the almoner of the 
divine bounty, as the universal bond which made 
the king in his palace and the serf in his hut both 
equally dependent upon the Infinite. 

Furthermore this reverence for the land is dis- 
tinctively Oriental. In India the unit of the social 
structure has always been the village community a 
little group held together by the land which they 
occupy.'^ Despite the havoc of repeated invasions 
India to-day is simply a vast congeries of these 
primitive land-units. The land is also a chief source 
of social consideration.*^ In the place of the classi- 
cal passion for personal liberty, the Hindu substi- 
tutes an almost fanatical attachment to the soil. It 

2TI 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

is said indeed that traces of a former feudal sys- 
tem still survive everywhere in India. '"' They are 
to be found also in Persia " and other parts of the 
East. 

Feudal Tenures. The second element of feudal- 
ism — its land tenures — also exactly reverses Ger- 
manic and classical polity. The chief aim of Ro- 
man law, as we have seen, was to magnify and 
consecrate individual rights of property: Hindu 
law, on the contrary, minimized them. The Mid- 
dle Ages, like India, domi-nated by the impulse of 
dependence, also restricted rights of property to the 
uttermost. Gradually the old absolute tenures dis- 
appear. The land-owner voluntarily surrenders his 
unconditional title in fee simple; his estate is en- 
cumbered with a host of charges and services; it 
cannot be alienated without the consent of the over- 
lord wdio, indeed, at first appears as the vendor"; 
it is not even strictly heritable, for the ownership of 
the heir depends upon permission and investiture 
by the suzerain. Thus an inconceivable complexity 
of titles arose ; in England there are instances known 
where the holder of the land had nine different lords 
over him, all of whom were regarded as holding 
one and the same piece of land.^^ 

Such then was feudalism. It was an attempt to 
organize society by means of spiritualising influ- 
ences — by instilling into men's minds the conviction 
of their common dependence upon each other and 
upon the Infinite. As such it was diametrically 
opposite to the classical attempt to organize society 

212 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

by first gathering men within city walls, and then 
still more widely uniting them within a vast empire 
held together by the brute power of the Roman 
legions. 

The ideal of the Middle Ages, 1 think, was a 
far nobler one than that of classic antiquity. But 
in the realizing of that ideal there was a most 
lamentable deficiency ; even Catholic historians have 
to concede that.^' In fine, the politics of the Mid- 
dle Ages seem to have precisely the same defect that 
we have found in their ethics and their sciences — a 
majestic ideal without any adequate method for its 
attainment. 

II. The Restriction of Commercialism 

We pass now from the external or political struc- 
ture of mediaeval society to its inner life — indus- 
trialism. And here too we f^nd the same reversal of 
Greek and Roman policy, the same turning towards 
the ideals of the East. Labor is cause, wealth its 
result ; and so the Middle Ages, like India, greatly 
exalted labor but laid many restrictions upon the 
wealth-seeking spirit. Let us begin with the second 
of these tw^o main characteristics of mediaeval in- 
dustry — the curbing of commercialism. 

Not by any means that the Middle Ages were 
blind to the necessity and benefits of trade. Nor 
were they poisoned by that Greek and Roman mili- 
tarism which despised all labor except that of the 
soldier. Their thinkers recognised that trade re- 

213 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

stricted within its proper sphere was simply one 
form of labor, and as such was to be honored and 
granted a fair reward. But they saw also that com- 
merce was peculiarly prone to transcend its normal 
functions. It tended to monopolize, to speculate in 
human toil, to enslave all other kinds of industry. 
Left to itself, unguarded, unchecked, it inevitably 
developed into a deadly sin and a public peril. 

This mediaeval distrust of commerce is summed 
up by Thomas Aquinas as follows : "Trade is ren- 
dered lawful when one seeks only a moderate gain 
for the maintenance of his household, and especially 
for the relief of the poor; still more when one pur- 
sues trade for the sake of the public welfare in order 
that the country may not lack the necessaries of life 
and not as the end but as the wages of his labor.^^ 

Mediaeval law and society accepted this view 
without questioning or dissent; and accordingly 
commerce, the acquisition of the products of labor 
in order to make a gain out of them was placed 
under severe restraints. Some of these restraints 
we have now to notice. 

Restriction of Property Rights. Of this we have 
already spoken in discussing the land tenures of 
feudalism. Here it is needful only to add that theo- 
retically mediaeval thought seems to have gone far 
beyond mere restriction. St. Augustine, the founder 
of Catholic theology, taught what has been rightly 
called, "a sort of sacred communism'' ; ^* there were 
no natural rights of property; all things belong to 
God who grants them to men upon condition of 

214 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

their fulfilling certain obligations. And the school- 
men generally appear to have thought that com- 
munism was the social ideal but that rights of in- 
dividual property had been engendered and made 
necessary by man's fall and sinful state. Even the 
early common-law of England seems to have recog- 
nised only relative, not absolute rights of owner- 
ship; it simply protected legal possession. ^^ And 
early German law insisted that every increase of 
value in land which was the result of labor should 
be to the profit of the laborer ; and thus land leased 
to farmers gradually became their own possession.^® 

Usury. Modern critics have been too apt to 
treat mediaeval peculiarities with something of the 
same disdain with which a boor regards a foreign 
language : it is mere gibberish and nonsense to him. 
The mediaeval view concerning usury, for ex- 
ample, is flouted as a silly superstition sprung from 
undue reverence for the Bible and ignorance of 
"economic" principles. ^'^ The simple truth is that 
usury was made universally odious in the Middle 
Ages by the whole sweep of a social system so dif- 
ferent from ours that it is very difficult for the 
modern mind to do it justice. 

The economists learnedly refute the ancient Aris- 
totlean fallacy concerning the "barrenness" of 
money. But what the Middle Ages really hated in 
the userer's money was its monstrous fertility. In 
Frankfort the ordinary rate was about 50 per cent. ; 
in Vienna and other cities often as high as 86 2-3 per 

215 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

cent. And these were for large loans; for smaller 
ones the rates were far higher. "God have mercy," 
one official complains, "it is a sin and a shame the 
way the poor man is robbed by the Jews who have 
established themselves in every little village and for 
every five florins lent require six times as much, 
charging interest and compound interest until the 
poor man has nothing left." ^^ 

In place of this infamous usury, the Middle Ages 
wished to substitute the principle of co-operation. 
All favor was shown to those mutual enterprises in 
which both the profits and the risks were shared 
between those who furnished the money and those 
who did the work. Mediaeval industry, from that 
of the peasants in the field to that of the merchants 
upon the high seas was mainly conducted upon this 
co-operative principle. And therefore the school- 
men laid a great stress upon the distinction between 
usury and profit-sharing. To the impartial ob- 
server it seems a distinction rational and just. And 
yet modern economists have been wont to sneer at 
it as a mere subterfuge — a trick to evade the pro- 
hibition of usury. 

Usury and the Greek Christians. We have al- 
read)^ noted ^^ a difference in the development of 
Oriental and Western Christianity — due to the dif- 
ferent needs of the people — whereby the Greek 
church diverged more and more from the Roman, 
depressed the priesthood, succumbed to the secular 
or royal power, became very much like the ritualistic 
branch of Protestantism. This explains, I think, 

216 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

why the Greek church, although the Fathers had 
unanimously condemned usury, gradually veered 
round to the Protestant view. And the superiority 
of the Byzantine Empire in commerce and wealth 
was very largely due to this sanctioning of usury."" 

It is no part of my business either to praise or 
condemn but simply to understand. Suffice it then 
that we have here another witness to that emphasis 
upon causes or principles and that indifference to 
results which characterized Western Christianity in 
the Middle Ages. 

Fixed Prices. Medisevalism also sought to re- 
strain the greed and deceit of traders by a careful 
regulation of prices. Not even India had carried 
this espionage so far. Throughout England, for 
example, the theory prevailed even far down into 
the sixteentli century that "victual being a necessary 
sustenance for the body should not be at the seller's 
liberty."-^ The rate of profits was fixed; and the 
dealers were carefully watched lest "they should 
take excess lucre upon their selling," that is to say, 
more than one penny upon the shilling. For this 
purpose the mayor of each town made weekly rounds 
of inspection among the shops ; and there were also 
minor officials charged with the special duty of pro- 
tecting "the poor commons" against the rapacity of 
the traders. 

The same policy prevailed in Germany. "In 
every well-regulated communty," says a writer of 
that day, the right prices are fixed and the right 
wages for labor so that no one may came to- want 

217 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

and everyone according to his or her position have 
sufficient food and clothing.^^ 

Insignificance of the Cities. England, just before 
the Black Plague, is supposed to have had a popula- 
tion of four millions. But London, the metropolis, 
had only forty thousand inhabitants; there were 
besides five or six other cities each containing on an 
average perhaps ten thousand people; the rest of 
the towns were mere villages, or rather hamlets. 
The wealth of the citizens was equally microscopic. 
In one town of some i8o burgesses, the richest man 
owned one cow, two hogs, a few hides and a little 
furniture — the value of the whole amounting to £4 
and 8s. Everything was on this humble scale except 
in one particlar : sometimes one of these towns would 
be situated upon land owned by different feudal 
lords, each of whom would insist upon having his 
own court and gallows ; and so we read of one small 
town which contained five gallows. ^^ It is hardly 
surprising that the population of the towns did not 
increase rapidly. 

If we turn to Germany the insignificance of the 
towns is equally manifest. Most of the many cities 
were but humble villages surrounded by a wall. The 
citizens "still were to a very large extent engaged 
in agriculture" — living within the walls but going 
outside to till their ^* miniature farms. 

In speaking thus of these little semi-rural cities 
in England and Germany, I am not so stupid as 
to forget their wondrous beauty — above all the 
great cathedrals, made all the more sublime by the 

218 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

filth out of which they sprang. But it was reUgion, 
not commerce, that created this civic majesty. 

Concerning the French communes nothing need 
be added except an explanation of their ephemeral 
character. This is a vexed problem to which such 
eminent French scholars as Guizot and Luchaire 
have given opposite solutions. But our present 
point of view, I think, illumines the question greatly. 
In the Italian cities commercialism was strong- 
enough to. fight its own battles victoriously against 
the nobles and the papal power; in the rural cities 
of Germany it was too weak to awaken ecclesiastical 
enmity. But in the French communes it was strong 
enough to- arouse the fiercest opposition; the church 
denounced the communes as conspiracies;"^ in 
1213, the synod of Paris thundered against them 
"as synagogues of usurers and extortioners." "^ 
Thus the communes hated by the nobles as a matter 
of course, coquetted with by royalty merely for its 
own advantage bitterly opposed by the church, were 
entirely friendless and soon decayed. 

An Objection, Such then is some small part of 
the proof that mediaevalism strove to repress the 
passion for wealth, the trader's greed of gain. It 
is often urged, however, that the church was hypo- 
critical in this : all the time she was filling her own 
coffers to the brim ; she owned one-third of Germany, 
for instance, at the close of the Middle Ages. But 
such charges overlook the difference between en- 
deavors for collective and for individual wealth. 



219 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

III. The Exaltation of Labor 

As medisevalism strove to suppress the passion 
for wealth sO' it strove for the exahation of labor, 
the cause of wealth. 

The Monasteries. The mighty uplift given to 
labor by the example of the early monks in Western 
Europe has been already referred to; and besides 
it is a matter so- generally understood that it needs 
here scarcely more than mention. The savage, 
whether Teuton or Red Indian, has no love for 
persistent toil ; and a thousand years of Greek and 
Roman civilisation had resulted only in making it 
still more repulsive and disgraceful. But the mon- 
asteries in the earlier Middle Ages were "Christian 
industrial colonies."'^ They were living examples 
to the barbarians around them, showing forth the 
dignity and grandeur of honest toil.^^ Even great 
prelates might often be seen laboring in the harvest 
fields ; and whenever a monastery was erected, there 
agriculture and other useful arts began to llourish. 
Thus the first great step in the regeneration of 
Europe was taken. 

But without lingering over these familiar facts 
let us go on to look a little more closely at the 
foundations on which labor was thus lifted up by 
the Western monks. For as in all human structures, 
even the noblest, there was a touch of imperfection 
here. We see traces of it in St. Augustine where he 
extols manual labor as holy because it does such 
violence to the natural inclination of the flesh. ^'^ 

220 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN THE MIDDLE y\GES 

Thus the dignity of labor is founded upon asceti- 
cism — the duty to "mortify" the body. True, the 
early Benedictine monks did not go- very far in this 
direction; they were willing enough to obey the 
maxim of their founder : "Be moderate in all things 
and consider human weakness." 

But as the centuries rolled on, the ascetic fever 
increased. In the eleventh century the order of 
Cistercian monks was founded. Their rule was 
seven hours of manual labor, seven for prayer, two 
for study; a single meal, consisting of two vege- 
tables and some fruit; for clothing the poorest and 
thinnest even in wintry climes. In the twelfth cen- 
ture 22,000 men became Cistercians, seeking to find 
"under this terrible rule, a yoke heavy enough to 
overcome their too passionate natures. "Above all 
there was an intense desire among members of the 
ruling class to join "by sharing" their sufferings 
the ranks of those who ate black bread in the sweat 
of their brows." Even before the order was founded 
"knights had been seen disguising themselves in the 
garb of poor wretches and living among the poor 
peasants by some hard manual occupation." ^° 

All that is magnificent : and evidently it was an 
ideal specially fitted to act upon the rude, wild life 
of the Middle Ages with incomparable power. But, 
although it seems ungracious here, I must insist 
that it was not the highest ideal ; it could not with- 
stand the logic of facts and advancing culture ; there- 
fore it was destined to pass away. For true self- 
sacrifice is not self-torture nor any ascetic striving 

221 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

for one's own salvation; it is simple, voluntary 
effort for the sake of another. That and that alone 
gives the full idea of a true cause and so makes a 
philosophy of history possible. 

The Nobility of Service. Labor was also exalted 
in the Middle Ages by the growing apprehension 
that service was inherently noble. Even great feu- 
dal lords esteemed it an honor to render the most 
menial service to their superior; in England, for 
example, the king's "dish-thegns," his "horse- 
thegns," etc., were the highest dignitaries in the 
land. Nor can I believe with Freeman that this 
indicates merely the growing- grandeur of kingship. 
Feudal royalty was but an empty shadow compared 
with that of imperial Rome, but nothing of this 
sort appears among the Romans. Moreover this 
dignity of service was felt not only in kings' courts 
but everywhere in mediaeval society; it is the grain 
of gold in the dross of chivalry. And it must have 
tended to lend dignity to manual labor, which above 
all else really serves mankind. 

Extinction of Slavery. The history of the servile 
classes in the Middle Ages is such an immense mass 
of differing, indigested details, and there are so 
many conflicting opinions concerning it, that an at- 
tempt to consider it within a page or two may seem 
absurd. And yet it seems to me that from oiu" 
present point of view we are furnished with an 
insight that brings order into even this chaos. 

The empire before its fall had virtually reduced 
the entire rural population to slavery : the difference, 

222 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

says a French historian, "between the lot of the 
colon and that of the slave was chiefly theoretical." "^ 
Once, German writers loved to imagine that the 
extinction of this universal slavery was due tO' some 
peculiar passion for liberty innate in Germanic 
blood. But that theory is no longer tenable. Abund- 
ant facts prove that the influence of the Conquest 
was retrograde; it arrested that slight amelioration 
of Roman slavery which Christian emperors had 
made.^- To the Anglo-Saxon,^^ the Frank,^* the 
Northern barbarians in general, as their laws show, 
the slave was no more than a beast of burden to be 
treated like other cattle.^^ And we are told that 
the colons or serfs lost even their theoretic distinc- 
tion from slaves and were reduced to strict slavery 
by the German invaders.^® 

But after the conversion of the conquerors there 
was a slow, silent uplifting of the servile classes. 
What confuses modern critics is that there was in 
this movement nothing modern — hardly a trace of 
"the ethical sentiment for freedom," no proclama- 
tion of emancipation, nothing spectacular.'^ The 
Middle Ages had no burning zeal for liberty. The 
Christian Fathers taught that slavery was "a legiti- 
mate and useful institution." St. Augustine even 
said that the Hebrew precedent of emancipation 
every seventh year had been virtually revoked by 
St. Paul.^^ The schoolmen as usual adhered gen- 
erally to the patristic view. It is said that the slaves 
in the monasteries were the very last to be eman- 
cipated.^^ Of all landlords, the religious houses were 

223 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

"not the most oppressive but the most tenacious of 
their rights ; they were bent upon maintaining villein 
tenures and personal villenage."' *" 

There was then very little of that "ethical senti- 
ment for freedom" which — if we may judge from 
the history of Greece, Rome and America — seems 
always to go hand in hand with a vast increase of 
slavery in its most villainous forms. Instead of 
that, there went on this slow, silent, mysterious 
uplift of the servile classes like that of moun- 
tains from the sea. The first notable sign of it is 
given in what one writer calls the "Magna Charta" 
of the enslaved — a provision in the Alemannic Code 
of A.D. 622, prohibiting any master from exacting 
more than three days' labor in one week from his 
slave.*^ Later on we find that the serf in France 
who formerly could be moved about at the will of 
his lord from place to place on some great domain, 
has acquired a fixed home and an adjacent plot of 
ground which he holds as his inheritance. And so 
one by one, other shackles dropped from the limbs 
of labor. And throughout this gradual liberation 
the impelling principle was precisely the same as 
that which had produced the feudal, the commercial 
and social life of the Middle Ages — the restriction 
and minimizing of rights. Men no longer had 
unconditional rights to a piece of land, to loan their 
money at interest, to put a price upon a loaf of 
bread. How could they be expected to retain such 
rights over human flesh and blood ? 

My confidence in this conclusion is strengthened 
224 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

by the fact that a distinguished French scholar with- 
out any philosophic theory to support, but after 
long, patient study of the question in all its details 
has reached the same result. The extinction of 
mediasval slavery, he says, was due to the renun- 
ciation of rights.*" 

One other fact must be noted. It is conceded that 
during the fourteenth century servile tenures were 
rapidly becoming obsolete. But in the next cen- 
tury a change took place for the worse. As 
medicTvalism decayed, commercialism, grew ram- 
pant : in Germany especially great trading corpora- 
tions were formed which monopolized the main 
necessaries of life; prices rose rapidly; above all 
there began that tightening of the bonds of serfdom. 
which was to continue for more than three centuries. 
And the German people with a wise instinct saw in 
the new Roman code of law then being introduced 
by the princes, the chief source of their troubles. 
That law knew nothing of free peasants or tenants 
in the German sense of the term ; "it recognised only 
autocrats and slaves." ^^ It set aside the old cus- 
toms and unwritten law; for it held nothing valid 
that could not be sustained by documentary evidence. 
It "looked on all German leases as limited and ap- 
plied the Roman slave-law to the German manor 
rights." ** Thus legal authority was given not only 
to deprive the peasants of their communal rights, 
but to evict them from their life-lease possessions 
and to increase their taxes. 

In fine, the mediaeval emphasis upon causality 
225 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

taught men their mutual dependence, it wove around 
the high and the low a network of reciprocal obli- 
gations. To that extent it favored the weak and 
curbed the individualism of savagery. It was, to 
be sure, a one-sided and therefore defective impulse. 
Nevertheless to it the laboring classes were indebted 
for their uplift from Roman slavery to the free 
communal life of the peasant in the fourteenth cen- 
tury. 

IV. Exaltation through Industrial Unity 

We have seen then that in many different ways 
the Middle x^ges strove to raise the laborer out of 
his pristine condition of bondage and degradation. 
But we have still to note the mightiest of all the 
agencies employed for that purpose — the creation of 
industrial unity. 

The East and the West. And here also that close 
parallelism which we have discovered at almost 
every point between the development of the Middle 
Ages and that of India is again disclosed. Just as 
India through her caste-system had developed 
among her toilers that wondrous skill which made 
her the workshop of the ancient world, so Western 
Europe sought to organize its industry. 

There was one vast difference, however. India 
made her castes hereditary, and so greatly aug- 
mented the tyranny of nature over the human spirit. 
That was the worst, perhaps, of all those exagger- 
ations of a one-sided, imperfect impulse which 

226 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

finally wrought her ruin. From such exaggerations 
the Middle Ages were saved by that fundamental 
and beneficent law of Christianity whereby the 
dominant impulse is always being enfeebled by 
the counter-impulse. 

Agricultural Communities. The triumph of the 
unifying impulse is shown in the communal life of 
the rural laborers. Some indeed speak scornfully 
of the village communities as archaic institutions. 
But one of the chief secrets of progress is to preserve 
whatsoever in the past can be adapted to the needs 
of the present or the future. And that the Middle 
Ages did. They left out in large degree the features 
of slavery visible in the old Pagan times,*^ but they 
retained "the ideas of communal ownership and 
equalised individual rights." ^^ The village acts as 
an organized community; it evidently has free dis- 
position as to rights connected with the soil; it dis- 
poses of those rights independently of the lord.*^ 
The villagers elect their own officers and conduct 
their own affairs. Arrayed thus against the lord 
as a group and not as single individuals they have a 
strong tower of defense. In fine, the lords seem to 
have little more than "the semblance of ownership.*"* 

In Germany in the closing century of the Middle 
Ages the peasants seem still freer. They settled 
their grievances in their own tribunals and were 
protected by the ancient laAV. They stood up in 
defense of their ancient rights and privileges and 
armed themselves against the foreign code and its 
accompanying growth of princely despotism and, 

227 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

above all, against the revival of bond-servitude once 
destroyed * ^' "^ but which now threatened to be 
re-established.*^ 

The Guild System. Still more complete was the 
organization of labor effected through the guilds of 
the artisans. Roman law, as we have seen, fostered 
the combinations of capital but was bitterly hostile 
to the humble brotherhoods of toil. But mediaeval- 
ism exactly reversed this policy. By its usury laws 
and other restrictions it rendered large combinations 
of capital almost impossible; and on the other hand 
it permitted and encouraged the organization of 
labor. It was a transformation complete and most 
beneficent. 

The labor-leagues and associations, writes an old 
chronicler,^" are formed to the end that the whole 
life of the members may be ordered according to 
Christian discipline and love and the work itself 
be consecrated. This consecration of labor was 
the keynote of the entire guild system. Every 
brotherhood insisted upon the sacredness of its own 
art, and constantly taught that "the highest reward 
of industry lies in each one's inner soul." 

Still the guild brethren did not by any means 
neglect their more earthly interests. They insisted 
upon fair wages. The guilds of Florence really 
ruled the city, and they forbade a manufacturer to 
discharge a workman except for grave reasons to 
be stated to the council of the guild ; "" landlords 
were not even permitted to raise rents except by a 
like permission. Our modern "sweating" S3^stem 

228 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

was then impossible; for industrial work was for- 
bidden in private houses.^^ Overtime also was 
strictl}^ prohibited : thfe great bell of Santa Maria 
rang at 3 p.m. all the year round; and when it 
sounded, the day's work in Florence was done."''^ 

The Law and the Guilds. Roman law fiercely 
opposed the industrial unions. Modern law, until 
the nineteenth century, crushed them. ; then it waged 
war against them; quite recently it has come to a 
position of "armed neutrality." But mediaeval law 
not only gave the brotherhoods of toil its good 
will and hearty encouragement ; it even surrendered 
to them some of its own chief functions. The super- 
vision of trade and industry, the regulation of 
prices, the prevention of frauds, police jurisdiction 
and even the administration of justice up to a cer- 
tain point — all these were largely entrusted to the 
guilds. In the end the most progressive of the free 
cities — Florence, for example — ^became little more 
than a confederation of guilds, each craft becoming 
responsible for its own membership and all, theo- 
retically at least, working together for the common 
good.^* They were so strong that even when "the 
central government was totally suppressed for a 
time, no great harm seemed to result from its loss."°^ 

Mining Unions. A striking contrast between the 
mediaeval and the modern way is exhibited in the 
mining industries of Germany which in the fifteenth 
century were very extensive. In 1471 rich mines 
were discovered in Saxony and later in Bohemia. 
Eight thousand miners are said to have been em- 

229 



1 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

ployed; great mining towns sprang up as if by en- 
chantment. In rapidity of growth they were like 
our own Western mining towns, but otherwise dif- 
ferent. For "owing to wise and energetic legisla- 
tion for communal life in these 'mushroom' cities 
and by the introduction of the guild system among 
the mining population a well-organized state of 
things was brought about in a comparatively short 
time in these new industrial marts.''' ^^ 

Federation of Labor. The German tradesmen 
prided themselves on being members of one huge 
corporate body which gathered into itself all the 
separate brotherhoods of the different trades. Al- 
though there was no written constitution there grew 
up, nevertheless, out of this amalgamated com- 
munity of interests and labor a common code of 
industrial law for all the countries of the empire. 
Members could make themselves known by the so- 
ciety's badge or password all over the world — in 
France, Italy, * * 'i' wherever the German guilds 
existed." " 

Thus the guilds brought the incalculable power 
of organization to the aid of labor. They secured 
fair wages to the workingman : the average earnings 
of a woolen-worker in Florence were larger than 
the salary paid to a man sent by a Florentine firm 
to manage a bank for them at London. The guilds 
exalted the dignity of toil by training the toiler to 
take a religious pride in good, honest work; they 
shielded him from the rapacity of the strong and 
from the evils of industrial strife or competition. 

230 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

They brought religion, that mightiest of all 
mediaeval forces, to his aid; for the guild was es- 
sentially a religious institution; and whenever an 
industrial group felt itself oppressed, it organized a 
new brotherhood — as its enemies alleged — "under 
the feigned colour of sanctity.'" ^® 

The guilds also helped mightily to extirpate serf- 
dom ; the villein who fled to a town, entered a craft 
guild and practised his trade for a year and a day 
was forever free.^^ The towns gloried in thus being 
the sanctuaries of freedom; the burghers of Spires 
had it graven in letters of gold upon the main door 
of their cathedral ; and the commune of St. Quentin 
solemnly enacted : "The gate is open to all ; and if 
the seigneur has unjustly detained the fugitive's 
property * * * we will execute justice.' '^*^ 

Through all these sources labor received a vast 
access of dignity. "God and the laborer," said a 
representative theologian of the later Middle Ages, 
"are the true lords of all that helps mankind : all 
others are merely distributors or beggars." ^^ 



NOTES 
1 De Civ. Dei. XIX. 15. 
" Gregory VIII, Ep. VIII. 21. Cf. Barker, Political Thought of Plato 

and Aristotle, 456. Jenks, Law and Politics in Middle Ages, 98. 

Jenks' proofs are convincing, but cannot be given here. 

* Laboulaye, Du Droit de Propriety fonciere en Occident, 258. "Quand 

la revolution fut accomplie et que la terre fut la noblesse et la 
grandeur, ce fut la systeme foedal." 

* Stubbs, Constitutional History of England. 

•> Albert, De Causis et Processu Universi, lib. II. tr. IV. cp. 14. 

* Ibid, cap. 2. 

■^ Maine, Early History of Institutions, 82. 

8 Elphinr.tone, Hist. India, I. 131. 

8 Tod. Feudal Systetn ir. India, I. R. A. Soc, N. S., Vol. 5, p. 44.- 

231 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 



where many authorities are quoted. Maine, however, rightly 
maintains that the feudalism of India was never completed. Vil- 
lage Communities, 153. 
1" Gobineau, Hist, des Perses, I. 575. 

11 Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, I. 211-12. 

1- Pastor, Hist. Popes, II. 277. The great political unity of the Middle 
Ages was broken, etc. Also Jannsen, German People, II. 189-264: 
on the failure to reform the empire. 

12 Ashley, Eng. Econ. History, 

1* Nourrison, Philosophie de St. Augustin, II. 402. 

IS Pollock and Maitland, Hist. English Law, II. 40. " Thus our law of 

the 13th century seems to recognise in its practical working the rela- 
tivity of ownership." 
1' Jannsen, Hist. German People, II. 96-7. 
^■^ Gibbon, Roman Empire, IV. 496, Note: for example. 
^** Jannsen, Plist. German People, II. 74. 
■^^ Book II. Chap. I. Sec. i. 
^opinlay. Hist. Greece, V. 

-iQreen, Town Life in 15th Century, II. 35 scq. 
22 Jannsen, Hist. German People, II. 103. 
^' Green, Town Life in the 15th Century, IT. 15 and 202-3. 
^-t Lamprecht, Deutsche Geschichte, IV. 214. Cf. Munro and Sellery, 

Medieval Civilisation, 363. 
-5 Luchaire, Les Communes francaises, 140. 
2« Ibid, 143. 

-■^ Cunningham, Western Civilisation, 35. 
-" Levasseur, Hist. d. Classes ouvricres, 135 et 149. 
-" De Opere Monachorv.m, XXVII. 
^o Garreau, L'Etat social, d. la France, in Munro and Sellery, Medieval 

Civilisaiion, 154-5. 
21 Lavisse, Histoire de France, Vol. I. part. II. p. In Munro and 

Sellery, 29. Adams {Civilisation during the Middle Ages, 307) 

says that at the end of the Empire the slave had been "transformed 

into the serf. But that is plainly incorrect. 
'- Wallon, Esclavage dans I'Antiquite, III. 413 seq. 
'^ Sharon Turner, Hist. Anglo-Saxons, III. 
^^ Yanoski, Abolition d'Esclavage ancien, 8. 
"^Leges Wallicae, III. cp. 2. "Hero enim eadem potestas in servum, ac 

in jumentum." 
="5 Edich. Theodos, 142: cf. Yanoski, 32. Also on Anglo-Saxons see 

Seebohm, The English Village Community, 176 seq. 
3" Except the Italian cities which emancipated their serfs with a grand 

flourish of trumpets and Stoic phraseology, Villari, Hist. Florence. 
38 Carlj'le, Hist. Med. Political Theory in the West, I. 123. 
"" Westermarck, Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, I. 697. Also 

Lecky, E. Morals. 
^'^ Pollock and Maitland, Hist. Eng. Lazv, I. 361. Also Green, Town 

Life, I. 279-94. 
*i Seebohm, English Village Community, 404. This had been the eccles- 



232 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES 



astical custom. "Et si super haec est. sicut servi ecclesiastici ita 
faciunt, etc." 

*2 Chevanne, Hist, de Classes agricoles en France, 68. "II n'etoit 
qu'une renunciation du maistre des droits determines." 

*' Jannsen, Hist. Get: People, II. 183. Also, 104-182. 

**Ibid, 183. 

*= Pollock and Maitland, Hist. Eng. Law, 404. Bracton insists upon 
relativity of serfdom, 3981. 

** \'inogradoff. Villainage in England, 238. 

*' Ibid, p. 359. 

** Ibid, p. 409. 

■*8 Jannsen, Hist. German People, II. 290. 

5" Quoted by Henderson, Hist. Germany, I. 185. 

^1 Staley, The Guilds of Florence, 153. 

E2 Ibid, 153. 

^' Ibid, 73. 

6* Villari, Hwf. Florence, 127. "Thus the Florentine communes resem- 
bled a confederation of Trade Guilds and societies of the Towers 
. . . if no election took place the companies were provisionally 
enii^owered to act in their stead." 

^^ Ibid, 546. 

^8 Jannsen, Hist. Ger. People, II. 39. 

^^ Ibid, 19 and 25. 

^* Green, Town Life in 15th Century, II. 124-7. 

^^ The English law was much more liberal; if the serf fled, he had to be 
reclaimed within four days, or not at all. Pollock and Maitland, 
Hist. Eng. Law, II. 404. 

'" Thierry, Tiers Etat, II. 100. 

•1 Langenstein ; cf. Roscher, Gesch. d. Nat. okonomik in Deutschland, 8. 



233 



BOOK IV 



MODERN CIVILISATION 



CHAPTER I 

PROTESTANT RELIGION 

I. Dependence upon the Infinite 

At the close of the fifteenth century medisevaHsm 
had evidently accomplished its mission. Farther 
development in that direction meant only Oriental 
torpor, stagnation and decay. But Christianity was 
true to its distinctive and fundamental law of regen- 
eration. A new work of transformation began. The 
counter-impulse — engrossed with sensible results, 
practical, questioning — which the Middle Ages had 
checked, now sprang into fullness of life. 

But let us guard against an ancient error culminat- 
ing in Hegelism. The later epoch is not the nega- 
tion of the former : cause and effect are not contra- 
dictory but complementary. The contrast between 
the two epochs is simply a difference of emphasis : 
what one puts first, the other makes secondary, and 
conversely. 

Calvinism. Coming now to note the chief fea- 
tures of the new movement we are at once con- 
fronted by its most enigmatic characteristic — its 
strange blending of fatalism with great zeal for lib- 
erty. The Calvinists struggled against external 

237 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

tyranny and gloried in inner slavery. Medisevalism 
on the contrary bowed humbly before outer despot- 
ism but clung to its faith in the freedom of the soul. 

But the seeming enigma is, after all, but another 
proof of our theory. Calvinism is really a lowering 
of faith in infinite causality. For as I have shown, 
no logically complete and uncontradictory conception 
of an infinite cause is possible except as a self-sacri- 
ficing, loving cause. But Calvinism has taken out 
that element — the very heart of the conception; its 
God is mere arbitrary will or power : in fine, it has 
logically nothing left but a mere negation, the empty, 
abstract Infinite. 

This is still more fully shown if we go back to St. 
Augustine, the inventor of the Calvinistic scheme. 
For St. Augustine expressly declared "that the ex- 
pression 'mercy' had only figurative meaning when 
predicated of God, because it implies suffering 
through the suffering of others." Nevertheless he 
believed himself justified in using it "in order to 
save the souls of the unlearned from stumbling." 
Thus Augustine fell lower than even the Indian 
Upanishads, for they somehow kept the faith that 
man was master of his own destiny. 

The orthodox schoolmen rejected Augustine's 
view of this matter and maintained the freedom of 
the will. And there is a very notable expression used 
by Thomas Aquinas in discussing this figurative 
character of the predicates applied to God. There 
is a more intimate likeness than in common analo- 
gies, " which rests on a causal relation." He is 

238 



I^PROTESTANT RELIGION 

not very clear but evidently has a glimpse of the 
great truth that the concept of causality can be fully 
understood only when it is applied to God. 

We seem then to have good ground for asserting 
that Calvinism involved a distinct lowering of faith 
in the Infinite Cause. Secondly, it also shows in- 
creased engrossment with results; for to the Cal- 
vinist everything converges upon the one question : 
Who are elect and who reprobated? Thirdly, the 
utility or "value" of the doctrine in developing the 
militant virtues is evident not only in Dutch and 
English but in Mahometan history. Finally, this 
engrossment with sensible results is printed upon 
the very face of a dogma which taught men to be 
so zealous about external liberties and so uncon- 
cerned about the freedom of the soul. 

Spinoza. But Calvinism is extinct, or at least a 
faint survival. My reason for dwelling upon it 
specially is that it was the first phase in a serial 
movement marked by a continual lowering of the 
conception of the Infinite down to the zero-point. 
And the curious fact that each phase occupies just 
about a century gives our induction almost a mathe- 
matical flavor. 

The first phase, as already said, was Calvinism ; 
but it was impossible for human reason, after it 
had once begun to inquire for itself, to abide by such 
a doctrine as that. And so we see European thought 
in its struggle to escape the difficulties and seem- 
ing paradoxes involved in the conception of the 
Infinite, taking exactly the same path which had 

239 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

been taken by Indian thought more than two thou- 
sand years before. That path was through the doc- 
trine of Maya or ihusionism ; the Infinite alone was 
real ; things finite, sorrow and sin were but a dream. 
But this doctrine was too distasteful to practical, 
realistic Europe to be accepted except by piece- 
meal — so to speak, in two doses. Hence came 
Spinozism, which surrenders time but not space as 
illusive. Extension is as real as thought ; all diffi- 
culties vanish, according to Spinoza, when we dis- 
card time and regard the spatial universe sub specie 
aeternitatis. 

But note that Spinozism must not be confined to 
the little handful who openly accepted it under that 
name. The spirit of the system was far more per- 
vasive than the ordinary historian of philosophy 
imagines. Thus Jonathan Edwards, the greatest 
metaphysical genius of America, had wrought out 
for himself in his lonely life among the savages a 
kind of Spinozism with which he tempers the ortho- 
dox Calvinism.^ The so-called English Platonists 
were also equally Spinozistic. For, is it not the 
very essence of Platonism that finite things exist only 
through some inexplicable "participation" in their 
eternal — that is timeless forms or ideas ? 

Kantianism. But this second or Spinozistic 
phase was but a compromise, a half-way house. In 
the third or Kantian phase we have the full, un- 
qualified return to India's ancient doctrine of Maya. 
Space as well as time, is but a form of thought. 
The finite is known, but unreal ; the infinite is real 

240 



PROTESTANT RELIGION 

but unknowable. In this doctrine, however, I have 
only an antiquarian interest as a curious survival ; 
and I desire to pass on to the fourth and final phase 
of this ever lowering conception of the infinite. 

Atheism. In a recent work by a well-known and 
very able Hegelian commentator ^ this final phase 
is brought fully to light. The evasiveness and 
ambiguity of Hegel are discarded; instead thereof 
we have an open and manly argument against the 
belief in an omnipotent God. All the chief objec- 
tions that have been urged since the era of the 
LJpanishads at least, are presented with skill and 
power. And yet it seems to me possible to exhibit 
— in a few words easily understood and remem- 
bered — the one great fallacy which vitiates all his 
arguments. 

T'hat fallacy consists in this : The true Infinite 
is divided into a number of empty abstractions, con- 
ceived as real entities, described as infi-nite and thus 
made to contradict each other. 

Immutability. Take now one of our author's 
two main arguments — and Kant's favorite one — 
that based upon the changelessness of God. "How 
can that which is changeless be the sole cause of 
any event?" I answer that God's changlessness 
must be conceived as relative to the other divine 
attributes: He began His creative work at a par- 
ticular period of time because he had sO' planned 
from all eternity, and this unvarying adherence to 
his own eternal councils is what theism and common 
sense mean by immutability. But Kant and Mac- 

241 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

Taggart are bewildered by some vague view of an 
absolute changelessness, which would of course 
make all other attributes impossible and reduce God 
to zero; but to this view I have what seems to me 
a most conclusive objection as follows : 

An absolute attribute is a self-evident absurdity, 
a plain contradiction in terms. For, the very es- 
sence of an attribute is to be relative to the sub- 
stance to which it belongs and thus to the other 
attributes of that substance. 

Omnipotence. But undoubtedly the most forc- 
ible objection to theism is that based upon the exist- 
ence of evil. And to it, I think, no fully satisfactory 
answer has ever been given. Even if it had been 
proved that the good preponderated over the evil 
in the world, a doubt would seem to still hang over 
either God's omnipotence or His love. Nor can 
we escape through the doctrine of human freedom ; 
for, the psychological evidence therefor can hardly 
be pronounced incontrovertible. 

From this downward path, then, there seems no 
way of escape except the one outlined in these pages. 
Mankind must come to know that the one central 
attribute of the Infinite — the one controlling and 
unifying all others — is his self-sacrificing love. 
Thereby the conception of God's power is not low- 
ered but immensely exalted; for, through this self- 
abnegation this voluntary limitation of Flis power 
for the sake of others, mere physical or intellectual 
power is lifted to its summit as moral power. 

Nor have w.e left this conception a mere hypothesis 
242 



PROTESTANT RELIGION 

very alluring if only it could be verified. We have 
verified it. We have shown, first that the concept 
of causality is indispensable in all thinking pro- 
cesses, cancel it and all thought is extinct. Sec- 
ondly, no idea of a complete cause is possible except 
that given in the idea of the self-sacrificing Infinite. 
Therefore the cancelling of the idea of the self- 
sacrificing Infinite leads logically to the cancelling 
of all thinking whatsoever — that is, to the extinc- 
tion of thought. 

I believe that to be a full, indefectible demonstra- 
tion of God's existence. It is a more complete 
redtictio ad absurdmn than any in geometry ; for the 
geometer merely proves that the negation of his 
theorem leads logically to the negation of some 
universally accepted principle; but I have proved 
that the negation of God's existence leads logically 
to the negation of all principles whatever — to the 
collapse of the whole thinking process. 

II. Justification by Faith 

The Protestant age, then, evinces an ever-de- 
creasing sense of dependence upon the Infinite. Still 
more vividly the tendency to transfer the emphasis 
from causality to its results is displayed in what 
is avowedly the central Protestant dogma — justifi- 
cation by faith. 

To be justified or acquitted, to have the right- 
eousness of another imputed to us, to be vicariously 
punished — that such ideas should be magnified as 

243 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

they were in Protestant theology certainly betrays 
a strange engrossment with results. The funda- 
mental principles of religion and morality are left 
in the background, the interest of the believer is 
wholly centred upon the question: How shall it 
fare with us in futurity? 

Doubtless there was a certain regenerating power 
in this dogma. Mediaevalism had collapsed and 
there was need of sweeping away the debris. The 
new emphasis upon justification by faith did that 
work; it taught men to rely upon themselves rather 
than upon the priests, quickened human energies, 
curbed superstition, brought other benefits too nu- 
merous and too well known to be recounted here. 

Nevertheless it was but mere engrossment with 
results. From the very start it was tainted with the 
same commercialism that characterised Greek and 
Roman religion; it would dispense with all priestly 
intermediaries and obtain its desired results at the 
least possible cost. Mediseval theocracy, in its final 
stages, proved to be a very costly bargain. "It 
was reckoned that nearly a third of the whole landed 
property of the country was in the hands of the 
church. * * ^ In many towns the church buildings 
and other institutions covered the greater part of 
the ground. "'^ No wonder then that economic 
motives played a considerable part in the programme 
of the Reformation. It is slanderous, however, to 
say, as some have, that they played the main part. 

But my thesis that there has been an ever increas- 
ing engrossment with the result — justifying or ac- 

244 



PROTESTANT RELIGION 

quittal — is proved by the palpable fact that through 
the past four centuries there has been a continuous 
degradation of the means or secondary causes em- 
ployed for the attaining of the desired result. 
Christ said: "If ye forgive men their trespasses, 
your heavenly Father will also forgive you." From 
that sublime height what a descent it is to the mod- 
ern view that divine forgiveness can be secured by 
hysterics, a spasm of fear, the clap-trap of the "re- 
vivalist" ! . 

III. The Hope of Immortality 

Coming now to another wilderness of controversy, 
I must confine myself, as usual, to what is absolutely 
essential. And the essential thing here is to rightly 
distinguish between faith and hope as related to im- 
mortality. 

Faith. The mediaeval belief in immortality had 
its origin in emphasis upon causality — in the all- 
embracing sense of dependence upon the Infinite. 
Thus the conviction of immortality formed are in- 
tegral part of the Catholic system, but only a minor 
and subordinate part. All its strength lay in this 
unity of the faith; by itself, resting only upon its 
own evidence faith in future existence would have 
been weaker than a hand or foot torn from the body. 

But in this modern age the belief in immortality 
— very potent in the first centuries after the Refor- 
mation — has gradually fallen to pieces because it 
does not rest upon any firm abiding conviction con- 

245 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

cerning the Infinite Cause. Christian theism seems 
to be sharing the fate of classical mythology. 
Wherever still retained, it is accepted apparently as 
an affair of blind faith, of irrational choice, of "the 
will to believe" or some other pitiful form of ob- 
scurantism; even professors in orthodox colleges 
now teach that the chief evidence for its truth con- 
sists in its "value" or utility.* Under such condi- 
tions immortality inevitably fades into a dim dying 
hope : it is literally "a castle in the air." 

But the new age now swiftly approaching will 
glow with a new vigor, not of blind faith, but of 
knowledge. "To knozu God," Christ said, "is eter- 
nal life." And there will be no further excuse for 
this modern sophistry unless some one can find a 
flaw in my demonstration that the negation of the 
Infinite, self-sacrificing Cause logically involves the 
extinction of all thinking. 

NOTES 

1 Leslie Stephen, Hours in a Library, 1. 329. "He is a kind of Spinoza- 
Mather." 
^ McTaggart, Some Dogmas of Religion. 
^ Jannsen, Hist. German People, 11. 295. 
* For example, Armstrong, Transitional Eras in Thought, 283-5. 



246 



CHAPTER II 

MODERN MORALITY 

I. The Basis of Morality 

We have pointed out the glory and the defect of 
medieval morality. Its glory was that it laid a 
broad, sure basis of moral obligation in the will of 
the Infinite Cause who had sacrificed something of 
His own power in order that man might be free 
and thus to a certain extent like Himself. Its defect 
lay in a too ascetic standard or code; it did not 
give proper prominence to those virtues that were 
most useful and magnified some of little value : it 
emphasized the cause or ground of morality and 
neglected its results. 

The modern era has exactly reversed the 
mediaeval procedure. It has worked out a more 
rational code of morals, but at the same time it has 
undermined the basis of moral obligation. Let me 
try first to prove the latter clause of this proposi- 
tion. 

The Freedom of the Will. Several agencies have 
combined in this undermining process, but I confine 
myself to one that in a measure comprehends the 
rest and which showed itself boldly at the very 

247 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

dawn of the Reformation — the denial of human 
freedom. 

Despite the seeming audacity of attempting a 
task which never yet has been accompHshed, I seek 
here to demonstrate the fact of man's moral free- 
dom. But in order to escape that tempest of rhetoric 
and sophistry that rises whenever the question of 
freedom is presented two or three preliminary con- 
siderations are needful. 

The Finite Cause. The Infinite alone is abso- 
lutely free, that is, able to act unaided and unaffected 
by aught else. Our moral activity is affected by 
physical influences — a grain or two of morphine 
for instance — by inborn dispositions and acquired 
habits. The wise advocate of freedom therefore 
affirms nothing but finite or responsible causality. 
Man despite all his disabilities is endowed with a 
power of initiative and control which makes him 
not the complete, not the sole, but the responsible 
cause of his conduct. 

That insight shuts off the irrelevancies about 
moral statistics, the partial predictibility of conduct, 
etc., with which determinists love tO' bewilder them- 
selves and others. 

Note too that we use the word "responsible" in 
its proper ethical sense. It is a pitiful evasion, al- 
though now very much in vogue, which speaks of 
man as being responsible in the sense that an apple 
is responsible for its rottenness or a tiger for his 
blood-thirstiness. 

The Uniformity of Physical Processes. Another 
248 



MODERN MORALITY 

chief fallacy of determinism comes from the failure 
to comprehend that the belief in the invariability of 
physical processes is not "an intuition" or a necessary 
"form of thought," but a scientific induction estab- 
lished and verified only in the last century or two. 
Therefore to extend this induction from physical 
over all psychical processes is sheer assumption. 
It is also utterly unscientific. For true science never 
extends an induction from one kind of phenomena 
to another kind without giving good reasons there- 
for. But such reasons the determinists have not 
even seriously attempted to give. And considering 
the contrast — complete at every point — between the 
physical and the psychical what can be more absurd 
than to claim off-hand that whatever is true of the 
one must be true of the others ? 

The Law of Causality. But it may be asked : 
Was there not prior to this scientific induction, a 
primitive, universal conviction that "every change 
must have a cause" ? Undoubtedly there was. But 
the origin of this conviction is very plain. For, a 
change — a motion for example — is an abstraction; 
it has no independent existence apart from some 
moving thing. Being dependent it is an effect and 
therefore must have a cause. To see that we need 
no mysterious "intuition," but only the ability to 
comprehend that a change is an abstraction. 

But the uniformity of all physical causation is 
quite another matter. It is a recent induction and, 
as we have just seen, cannot legitimately be ex- 
tended beyond the physical realm. It is as distinct 

249 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

from the principle described in the previous para- 
graph as black is from white. But the determinist 
confounds them, mixes them pell-mell together, and 
then begins to declaim about what he calls "the 
law of causality." 

The Positive Proof of Moral Freedom. These 
preliminary considerations then show that deter- 
minism is mere rhetoric devoid of all logical proofs. 
But is there any positive proof of freedom? Un- 
mistakably there is. From our present point of 
view the proof is so plain and simple that it may 
be written almost on one's thumb-nail. 

If man is not free, God within the range of hu- 
man experience has sacrificed— surrendered noth- 
ing of His own power for the sake of others. Thus 
for man the idea of a full, true cause is made ni- 
conceivable; and with that, as we have repeatedly 
shown, all thinking is rendered logically impossible. 

The course of modern ethic then has been pre- 
cisely parallel to that of modern religion. It has 
tended to subvert the very basis of morality, the 
belief in moral freedom. The same deadened sense 
of causality has impaired faith in both the Infinite 
and the finite or human cause. Thus the basis of 
morality has been completely undermined. But let 
us turn to a less gloomy aspect of the modern ethical 
movement. 

II. The Standard of Morality 

The word utilitarianism has to many a very evil 
sound. And so when I maintain that the modern 

250 



MODERN MORALITY 

era has been ruled throughout by the utiHtarian 
tendency, it may seem like a silly libel upon four 
splendid centuries that have done far more for 
human progress than any other four known to his- 
tory. But there is no note of scorn in my char- 
acterization. Utilitarianism — engrossment with re- 
sults — was a beneficent, a regenerative power in 
Western Europe until at the close of the eighteenth 
century it had become so exaggerated and one-sided 
as to forget God and undermine the basis of 
morality. 

Historic Evidence. The history of those cen- 
turies shows upon its very face the magic power 
there was in this new utilitarian tendency. Some 
writers have even maintained that the mercenary 
instinct was the main-spring of the Reformation.^ 
"If masses were made free by Act of Parliament," 
it was said,^ "there wold be few to say that there 
was no Purgatory." But that is unjust to the early 
reformers, the Dutch Calvinists, the Huguenots, the 
Puritans of old, and New England who' sacrificed 
so much for conscience, for liberty for nobler causes 
than the greed of gain. The utilitarian tendency has 
other and better manifestations than mere mer- 
cenariness and all of them had their share in the 
Reformation work. 

The truth is that asceticism at the close of the 
Middle Ages was an exhausted function. Absorbed 
in theological issues depreciating the practical de- 
mands of life, it had no further promise. Then 
the counter-impulse began its reign, the ethic which 

251 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

idealized the useful and despised the dreamer. And 
this new spirit, intent upon practical results, self- 
reliant, thrifty, eager for prosperity on earth as 
well as beyond the skies entered upon a vast work 
of regeneration. It broke the spell of the old asceti- 
cism, the adoration of poverty and pain, the night- 
mare that was benumbing almost all human capaci- 
ties except the capacity for suffering. The new 
ethical movement awakened human energies before 
undreamed of. It opened up the New World, dis- 
sipated illusions, ushered in the light of science, 
brought the sweet morning-air of liberty. 

Utilitarianism then is an essential factor in every 
sound moral code. Just as physical laws are verified 
only by observation of physical results, so moral 
laws are verified only by observation of social re- 
sults. 

Modern Mercenariness. But here again we are 
confronted by that fatal fact of one-sidedness and 
exaggeration which we have found in every period 
and phase of human history. The same impulse 
which substituted a rational pursuit of utility for 
the useless asceticism of the Middle Ages tended 
also — as we have shown in the preceding section — 
to imdermine the basis of morality. Furthermore 
the new spirit of inquiry and enterprise has dis- 
closed such illimitable treasures in the bosom of 
Nature, that the cupidity of man has been inflamed 
almost to madness. The immensity of our wealth 
has brought not contentment and gratitude, but a 
wild fever of strife and gambling. That explains 

252 



MODERN MORALITY 

why we Americans are considered rightly, I fear, to 
be greedier of gain than my other people. 

But long ago the early Protestants foresaw this 
danger, and groped for means to check it. Luther 
for instance, wished to restrict the profits of retail 
trade to five per cent, and of wholesale trade to one 
per cent.^ But that was like King Canute's com- 
mand to the ocean. 

Nevertheless it is incredible that this mercenary 
period should be perpetual. Indeed, our insight 
into its origin is also a prophecy of its decline. For 
we have seen that this reign of avarice is but an 
incident of the great revolution wrought by the 
discovery of the physical order of the world. And 
the downfall of that unhappy reign will be due to 
that still more splendid revolution that will soon be 
wrought by the rediscovery of the moral order of 
the world. 

NOTES 

^ Adams, Civilisatioit and Decay, 190 et al. One of the main theses of 

the book. 
^ St. Germain, Dyalogue, 2$. Cf. Gasquet, Eve of the Reformation. 
" Wiskemann, Darstcllung d. i. Deutschland zur seit der Reformation 

herrschenden national-okon. ansichten, 54. 



253 



CHAPTER III 

THE CREATION OF MODERN SCIENCE 

I. The Great Enigma 

Excepting the advent of Christianity, the rise of 
modern science has exerted, I think, a grander and 
more beneficent influence upon the fortunes of man- 
kind than any other event in human history. And 
it seems too one of the most enigmatic of events. 
Why after so many thousand years of darkness this 
sudden bound almost from midnight to noonday? 
The few discoveries made by the genius of Greece, 
Rome, Alexandria were but so many disconnected 
meteors; why then in the seventeenth century — an 
age rotten with bigotry, religious wars and other 
horrors — did the sun of science burst forth? This 
problem certainly has never been solved. It has 
hardly been seriously propounded. 

We are indeed often told that the rise of modern 
science was due to the employment of the inductive 
method. But unfortunately they do not tell us what 
the inductive method is ; there is no question about 
which logicians are more hopelessly at variance 
than that. 

254 



THE CREATION OF MODERN SCIENCE 

Furthermore, I do not believe that the true theory 
of induction will ever be discovered in the way com- 
monly adopted — that is by inventing a lot of 
"canons," etc., and then selecting a few facts here 
and there that happen to fit our guesses. The right 
way, it seems to me, is the one I am here attempting 
— viz., to study the history of the sciences, one by 
one, until we find a clue to the method which the 
great discoverers have instinctively pursued. 

Already, our study of the different epochs of his- 
tory has revealed the dim outlines of such an induc- 
tive theory. It seems to show that physical re- 
search, to succeed, must combine two factors : first 
the critical, inquiring spirit which demands strict 
verification; second, firm faith in the invariability 
of natural processes. The Greeks had the first but 
they lacked the last; for them things happened 
largely by chance, "generally or for the most part," 
as Aristotle phrases it. The Middle Ages, on the 
contrary, lacked the first factor but they had the 
last in high degree: even Positivists like Comte 
recognise the great gain to science involved in the 
mediaeval conception of the divine unity.^ *It was 
indeed believed that miracles might occasionally 
occur, but even that opinion was directly antagonis- 
tic to the Greek view that things happened by chance. 

Therefore when the Protestant age of criticism 
and inquiry began it was fully equipped with this 
heritage from the Middle Ages — the belief in the 
invariability of all physical processes of causation. 
And happily this belief was strengthened, not weak- 

255 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

enecl by every new scientific discovery. Such is 
the theory of induction which I wish to define more 
precisely and to verify by a brief glance at the his- 
tory of the sciences. 

II. Descriptive Astronomy 

At the very start of our survey we are met by 
an error which I think, has done much to obscure 
the true genesis of science and the real nature of 
the inductive method. Hence it must be carefully 
considered. 

Copernicus and Modern Idealism.. The survivors 
of the Kantian school of philosophy love to imagine 
that there is some correspondence between their il- 
lusionism and the so-called "distrust of the senses" 
evinced by the first great scientific discoverers.' On 
the contrary, the two views are completely antag- 
onistic. Copernicus, for example, by no- means re- 
gards perception as Maya, as "transcendental illu- 
sion," as a gigantic imposture forced upon all men 
by some mysterious fatality of their natures. On 
the cohtrary he regards perception simply as an 
invariable process, always truth-telling but contain- 
ing within itself many factors, some of which care- 
less thought is apt to overlook and thus is led into 
error. Even an observant savage knows that the 
rapid motion of the spectator will make stationary 
objects seem to move, but it required the genius and 
the toil of a Copernicus tO' so apply this principle 

256 



THE CREATION OF MODERN SCIENCE 

to the vast complexity of the heavenly motions so 
as to disentangle the real from the apparent. So 
in regard to the earth's seeming immobility ; so great 
and learned an astronomer as Tycho Brahe to the 
end of his life rejected the Copernican theory mainly 
for the reason that "the earth was a sluggish body 
unfit to niove/'^ and many years were to elapse be- 
fore the science of mechanics was sufficiently de- 
veloped to show men how the earth's motion might 
be imperceptible. So difficult was it to comprehend 
even a process like that of perception which all men 
were using every moment of their waking hours. 

Kepler and Mysticism. The great scientific dis- 
covers, then, were not Kantian illusionists. Never- 
theless they were idealists in the true sense of the 
term. Copernicus, for example, was the boldest of 
free spirits, for forty years an unwearied observer. 
Yet he clung to the mediaeval convictions and ex- 
pressly based his new doctrines upon the old faith 
in cosmic unity and harmony.* To use a phrase 
of his own, he looked at the universe "with both 
eyes"'"* — the outer eye that revealed a chaos of 
changes and the inner eye that revealed the unseen 
and changeless. 

But Kepler especially has been reviled for his 
mysticism.® It caused the great discoverer, so 
Comte scornfully asserts, to waste seventeen years 
over a problem that might otherwise have been 
readily solved.'^ But Kepler maintained that his 
mysticism was the light that led him on through 

257 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTdRY 

many dark places to his splendid goal. What could 
be sillier, then, than to sneer at him for having 
wasted seventeen years in makings discoveries which 
the rest of that Humanity that Comte adored had 
not been able to make in more than seventeen hun- 
dred years ? 

True idealism or mysticism is best comprehended 
by distinguishing it from, empiricism. For exam- 
ple, such empiricists as Aristotle and the Greeks in 
general explained the fall of a stone by saying that 
the stone "seeks its own place" — that is by assum- 
ing an analogy between stones and living things. 
That is empiricism, a way of thinking that knows 
no unity except that of mere resemblance, analogy, 
similarity, etc. — a way that reached its summit in 
the celebrated Hegelian theories about ''likeness and 
difference." Idealism or mysticism, on the con- 
trary, scorns this false unity of resemblance and 
seeks after the true unity of dependence. It does 
not expect to perceive this dependence as something* 
visible or tangible but as something proved wher- 
ever rigid invariability of sequence or co-existence 
can be discovered : when events or changes follow 
one another in a mathematically invariable order 
they must be somehow causally connected, resultants 
from a common process of causation. 

So Kepler led by his mystical faith in that 
true unity of dependence which binds the universe 
together, believed that there must be mathematically 
invariable relations subsisting- between the times, 

258 



THE CREATION OF MODERN SCIENCE 

distances and velocities of the planetary bodies. He 
spent his life in trying to discover these relations. 
And he found them. 

Mechanics. We need not here enter into that 
labyrinth of questionings, experiments and discus- 
sions out of which at last emerged the science of 
mechanics. Bare inspection of the simple laws of 
motion finally established shows here precisely the 
same trend as in all other true scientific movements 
— to wit, the disclosure of invariable processes so 
strictly defined that their results can be mathemati- 
cally computed and compared with observed results. 
Thus the first law of motion reveals the constituent 
unit of all such processes — a motion which, if 
miafifected by new causes would continue forever 
without change of direction or velocity. And the 
second law reveals the manner in which such units 
or factors are combined so as to produce those very 
complex and ever changing motions known to sense. 

Nor need I repeat the familiar story of the way 
in which the knowledge of these simple laws of mo- 
tion removed the obstacles that had so long hindered 
the acceptance of the Copernican theory. Instead let 
us pass on to the noblest act in the great drama of 
the scientific movement. 

Newton. Newton also was a mystic : an untiring 
student of Jacob Boehme, a lifelong alchemist de- 
voting much of his time to the occult art,^ a theorist 
whose visionary speculations concerning the causes 
of gravity, for instance, rival the dreams of Kepler.** 
Thus each one in the great astronomic triumvirate 

259 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

is a witness to the fact that modern science owes 
its origin to a just blending of the new demand for 
free inquiry and proof with the mystical, mediaeval 
faith in an infinite, immutable cause. 

But because the results achieved by Newton are 
more fully developed than those achieved by Kepler 
and Copernicus, therefore the mystical element is 
more transparent in the former than the latter. In 
fact the Newtonian theory of gravitation is the per- 
fect pattern of what is less clearly presented in 
every other scientific induction. To use again an 
example already given take the case of a falling- 
stone. Here we have an effect of a literally incon- 
ceivable complexity and changefulness, a motion 
that at every infinitesimal instant is changing both 
its velocity and its direction. And yet it is the pro- 
duct of an absolutely invariable process of causation. 

The same statement applies manifestly just as 
well to every other fact falling under the Newtonian 
theory, confessedly the most comprehensive induc- 
tion that man has framed. So I cannot be accused, 
as so many philosophers have justly been, of in- 
venting a scheme and then selecting a few scattered 
facts to support it. Furthermore, I stand ready 
whenever challenged to prove the same concern- 
ing any other real induction. 

It may be objected that what I call a process of 
causation is merely a law. That I deny. A law 
in physics is a mere metaphor; one too that sug- 
gests the false and hides what is true and most es- 
sential in a natural process. 

260 



THE CREATION OF MODERN SCIENCE 

III. Physics 

Of the different branches of physics I shall con- 
sider two that show with special clearness the chief 
obstacles tO' the creation of science. 

Acoustics. Aristotle and the Greeks in general 
recognised vaguely that sound was not a substance 
travelling through the air but was somehow the 
resultant of the air's motions. And Vitruvius had 
gone so far as to- liken these atmospheric motions 
to the waves caused by dropping a stone into still 
water. Thus even the earliest inquirers had a 
glimpse of the ultimate generalization of acoustics 
— the theory of undulations. But nothing came of 
this view, because it lacked the one distinctive fea- 
ture of scientific induction — mathematical exactitude 
or verifiableness. It was but a conjecture, undefined, 
having nO' known support except the omnipresent 
fallacy of resemblance. 

Thus it remained for almost two thousand years, 
until Newton began his researches. With consum- 
mate skill and toil he searches out the various fac- 
tors in this undulatory process, and from these 
known conditions he is able to calculate what ought 
to be the precise velocity of sound. But still his 
induction is fatally defective ; it cannot be verified ; 
the calculated velocity is 174 feet per second less 
than the actually observed rate. And so for one 
hundred and twenty-eight years more, the nascent 
science was in the limbo of dispute and uncertainty.^** 

At last, in 18 16, La Place showed that there was 
261 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

in this undulatory process a neglected factor. By 
this sudden compression of the air heat is generated 
and thus the air's motion is greatly increased. And 
when due ahowance was made for this neglected 
factor, the calculated and the observed results were 
found to precisely correspond; and acoustics be- 
came a science. 

The whole genesis of science is epitomized, I 
think, at least in one of its aspects, in this glance at 
the origin of acoustics. 

Optics. The creation of the science of light was 
long delayed by what seems a different obstacle but 
reall}^ one closely cognate with that just noted. 
Even the Alexandrians seem to have instinctively 
felt that the key to optical science lay in the prop- 
erty of refraction. But this property hides under 
one name a myriad of variations among which they 
vainly sought to find any definite relation ; Ptolemy, 
for instance, imagined that the angles of incidence 
and refraction were proportional to each other. The 
Arabians refuted this opinion, but without finding 
the true formula. In modern times even the genius 
of Kepler was baffled in its attempts to solve the 
problem. But at last in 1622, Snell discovered the 
true law — "the ratio of the sines of the angles of in- 
cidence and refraction are constant for the same 
medium." 

It is a disgrace to philosophy and science that 
Descartes having had access to Snell's papers pub- 
lished the latter's solution as his own, and so 
robbed a great discoverer of his rightful fame." The 

262 



THE CREATION OF MODERN SCIENCE 

thief, however, made excellent use of his stolen 
goods. With Snell's formula, he was enabled to 
calculate the laws of the rainbow, that beautiful 
mystery upon which all ages had gazed with admir- 
ing wonder. At least Descartes explained the nar- 
row band of light, its position in the sky, its diame- 
ter, the secondary bow, everything but the colors. 
The last was reserved for Newton, who proved that 
the different colors resulted from different degrees 
of refrangibility in the rays. 

Thus Snell's simple mathematical formula defin- 
ing precisely the process of refraction proved to be 
indeed the key which rapidly unlocked the secrets of 
light. 

IV. Chemistry 

The origin of acoustics as a science hinged upon 
the discovery of a neglected factor in the undulatory 
process : optics, in the discovery of an exact mathe- 
matical conception of the process of refraction. I 
wish now to show that the origin of chemistry as 
a science was due to two precisely similar discov- 
eries, the one disclosing a neglected factor in chemi- 
cal processes ; the other bringing them under strictly 
mathematical relations. 

Simplicity of the Elements. The one great, all- 
destroying error in Greek research was the universal 
belief in the elementary simplicity of earth, air, fire 
and water by a mixture of which all things were 
made. That plainly is the acme of empiricism — of 
that fallacy of resemblance which crudely general- 

262, 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

izes from a few obvious likenesses and differences. 
Already in the Middle Ages, as we have seen, the 
mysticism of the alchemists had begun to subvert 
this ancient error. The theory of "the three prin- 
ciples" warred against that of the four elements. 
But the alchemistic views were mainly fantastic and 
visionary, the wild dreams of a mysticism not bal- 
anced as yet by a demand for facts and strict proof. 

And so even for centuries after the modern age 
of inquiry and skepticism had begun, the old Greek 
belief in the simplicity of the elements — especially 
of the air — still persisted with an amazing vigor. 
It was such an easy and cogent fallacy that learned 
men clung to it despite even the evidence of their 
senses. For early in the seventeenth century. Van 
Helmont discovered carbon dioxide and some fifty 
years later Mayou actually described oxygen under 
such names as "aerial spirit" and "nitre-air." But 
the idea of specifically distinct gases was never clear 
even in the minds of those that produced them. 
The oxygen which Mayou describes was regarded 
merely as nitrous particles floating in the air and 
not as one of its constituent parts. Even so late as 
1727, Hales, the first man who had actually seen 
oxygen disengaged from the atmosphere, was under 
the same delusion. "The atmosphere," he said, "is 
a chaos." 

Thus oxygen, the most potent, the most univers- 
ally diffused of all agents in chemical processes re- 
mained from century to century a neglected factor. 
It is pitiful to read how many otherwise skillful 

264 



TtlE CREATION OF MODERN SCIENCE 

experiments made even in the Middle Ages came 
to naught and hoAv many brilliant discoveries were 
nipped in the bud by this neglect to- take account of 
the atmosphere or its chief constituent. We marvel 
at the theory of phlogiston and its revival of Aris- 
totle's absurd doctrine of "levity"; it seems incred- 
ible that the most eminent chemists down to the 
opening of the nineteenth century should have been 
devout believers in anything so preposterous. My 
explanation is that so much confusion and contra- 
diction had been introduced into chemical experi- 
mentation by this neglect of its chief factor that a 
sort of mental vertigo had set in, like that of men 
standing on their heads. 

But at last near the close of the eighteenth cen- 
tury a happy thought wanders into the brain of a 
French chemist, Lavoisier. In the place of this 
mythical phlogiston and its "negative weight" he 
substitutes the omnipresent oxygen. And as by 
magic the confusion and absurdity disappear. 
Everything becomes orderly and sane. After so 
long waiting chemistry has become a science. 

Elective AfUnity. By bringing into prominence 
this long neglected factor, chemistry had finally be- 
come a science, but one of low degree. It still 
lacked that mathematical quality, that stamp of in- 
variability and predictive power which completes 
the scientific ideal. Another discovery was needed. 

Long before this the ancient theory of things as 
mere mixtures of the four elements had been aban- 
doned. In the thirteenth century the doctrine of 

265 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

chemical affinity was announced by Albertus Mag- 
nus, and from that time began to supplant the theory 
of mixtures. But it was a doctrine inexact, meta- 
phorical — a poetic insight on its way to become a 
scientific truth. Without recounting the successive 
steps taken we need only to note that after five 
centuries the movement begun by the mediaeval mys- 
tic, Albertus, was finished by the Quaker mystic, 
Dalton. Through the latter's discovery of "atomic 
weights" or "chemical equivalents," the composition 
of bodies became capable of precise mathematical 
determination. Thenceforth chemistry was one of 
the typical sciences, complete in their foundations, 
but never in their superstructure. 

The genesis of chemistry is due, then, as I 
claimed, to the removal of two obstacles — neglected 
factors and inexact conception of natural processes 
of causation. 

V. The Classificatory Sciences 

So far it seems proved that the origin of the 
sciences considered was due to the discovery of pro- 
cesses of production so mathematically invariable 
that the oversight of any factor in such a process is 
self-revealing. In the classificatory sciences this 
mathematical exactitude is for the most part un- 
attainable; but it is no longer necessary. The 
processes of gravitation or of chemical composition 
are hidden: our knowledge of them is inferential, 
through the comparison of mathematically calcu- 

266 



I THE CREATION OF MODERN SCIENCE 

latecl with actually observed results. But in the 
organic world the processes of production are di- 
rectly presented to observation. 

For this reason man early learned tO' know many 
species both in the plant and the animal world ; but 
there his knowledge stood still for thousands of 
years. Only a little more than three centuries ago 
was any way found for arranging these species into 
genera, orders, etc. In 1565, Gessner showed how 
the different species of plants might be systemat- 
ically arranged, according to characteristics drawn 
fromx the processes of fructification. Hence he has 
been rightly entitled "the inventor of genera." 
Cassalpinus developed this view still farther; and 
another botanist is said to have discovered the dis- 
tinction between monocotyledons and dicotyledons. 
Even Linnaeus, the famous creator of "the artificial 
system," seems to have been vaguely conscious that 
a true classification must rest on something more 
than mere resemblance. And hence in the deeper 
part of his systemizing, "he is guided by an un- 
formed and undeveloped apprehension of physiologi- 
cal functions." *^ 

This belief in the real unity of natural processes 
was much strengthened by the poet Goethe's dis- 
coveries in the morphology of plants; all parts of 
the plant except stem and root were sO' many trans- 
formations of the leaf ; countless diversities of form 
and color were products of one unchanging process 
of production. Then very soon came Von Mohr 
and Schwann with their revelations concerning the 

26^^ 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

organic cell, a microscopic particle of matter, yet en- 
dowed with contractility, irritability and all the 
other fundamental properties of life. Then other 
discoveries all tending in one direction and culmin- 
ating in the doctrine of evolution. All well-in- 
structed persons now understand that in some sim- 
ple unicellar organism, an amoeba, we may behold 
the perfect type, an actual, perceptible example of 
that physiological process by the multiplication of 
which all the infinite variety of living things is pro- 
duced. 

And one of the most eminent of biologists tells 
us that the real development of his science has 
hinged mainly upon this visible disclosure of the 
physiological process. Only as inquiry, he says, 
has turned from the highest organisms tO' study in 
the lowest the process of life in the concrete has 
biology in theory and practise made much progress. 

Am I not right then in extending this to the gen- 
esis of all the sciences? Have I not shown at least 
concerning the principal ones, that their develop- 
ment has always hinged upon the disclosure of such 
processes of causation — sometimes so hidden as in 
astronomy, that they can be verified only by the 
Infinitesimal Calculus — sometimes openly revealed 
in living examples as in biology? 

Such then seems to me to be demonstrably the 
true genetic theory of the scientific movement. That 
movement is the product of two ages. The first age 
emphasizing causality, extirpated the Greek and 
savage view of nature as half uniformity and half- 

268 



THE CREATION OF MODERN SCIENCE 

accident; instead thereof it instilled into European 
thought belief in an Infinite Cause working by abso- 
lutely invariable processes. The second or modern 
age, utilitarian and skeptical, has verified these 
processes, at the same time ridding them of their 
mediaeval investiture of dream and fantasy. 



NOTES 
i Positive Philosophy. 

2 Hoffding's History of Modern Philosophy is especially full of this 
error. See, for example, his account of Galileo. 

* Dreyer, Tycho Brahe, 236. 

* Czynski, Kopernik et ses Travaux, 6 et al. 
^ De Rev. Orb. Coelest, I. 9, 7. 

8 La Place, Hist, d' Astro nomie , 94. Also Bethune, Galileo, 27. 

" Positive Philosophy, I. 173. 

8 Brewster, Memoirs of Neivton, I. 34, and 388. 

^ Ihid, II. 127. 

10 Whewell, Hist. Inductive Sciences, II. 34-36. 

^' Isaac Vossius {De Lucis Natura) says he had seen this law in Snell's 
unpublished treatise, and adds: "Cartesius got his law from Snell, and 
in his usual way concealed it." Huyghens also testified to the same 
effect. Whewell, Hist. Ind. Sciences, II. 56. 

12 Whewell, Hist. Inductive Sciences, II. 399. 



269 



CHAPTER IV 

MODERN ART 

I. Shakspeare and Cervantes 

We made it our fundamental principle in aesthetics 
that the perfection of art depends upon an emotional 
balance between the two complementary impulses, 
the one seeking for causes, the other intent upon 
results. We have proved our principle in regard 
to Greek and Italian art. And the same truth 
shines forth just as clearly in the Elizabethan Age. 
It was the morning-hour of modern liberty: never 
was human enterprise more daring or had a wider, 
more magnificent field for its display. But with 
all this eager looking forward and this intentness 
upon practical results, still the mediaeval memories 
were very vivid and had a tremendous power over 
the popular life. It still remains a disputed point 
among historians whether England was at heart 
Catholic or Protestant during the sixteenth cen- 
tury. 

The same equipoise characterises the genius 
of the triumvirate of poetry. No one can surely 
tell whether Homer was Asian or European. Nor 
whether the invisible world or this present life was 

270 



kODERN art!' 

the real focus in Dante's masterpiece. Nor whether 
Shakespeare was CathoHc or Protestant. In all of 
them the two tendencies met and mingled like con- 
trasted strains in a musical harmony. 

Shakspeare. Note how felicitously these two^ 
strains were blended in the genius of Shakspeare. 
There never was a freer spirit, a more daring inno- 
vator, a closer student of reality. And yet he had 
the mediaeval impulse in all its fullness, that convic- 
tion of unity — not of mere external order or resem- 
blance — but that inner unity of dependence which 
binds together the seemingly disconnected and in- 
congruous. And so it has become the merest com- 
monplace to say that Shakspeare violates all the 
external, artificial unities of the Greek drama in 
order to reach the deeper unity of natilre and life. 

Just there toO' lies the secret of his indisputable 
supremacy as the painler of human individualit}^ 
The characters of the Greek drama are at best but 
general types, often only personified abstractions. 
Even with Aeschylus the centre of interest is not 
in the unfolding personality, but in its unhappy 
environment, its struggles and woes; the essential 
humanity in Prometheus or Agamemnon is but 
slightly tinged with true poetic individuality. His 
successors, are still more engrossed with external 
unity; everything seems to hang upon ingenuity of 
plot, pathos and surprise. Euripides especially is 
a master in startling effects, entangled situations, 
pathetic scenes, anything calculated to keep curiosity 
on the rack. But the Middle Ages put an appalling 

271 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

emphasis upon the inner Hfe. Outer circumstances, 
even "our vile bodies" counted for nothing com- 
pared with that conscious unity of power within 
that went on evolving its good or evil through all 
eternity. 

Shakspeare accepts this mediaeval ideal, in its 
essence. For him human individuality is not a mere 
bundle of habits or adjectives, but a cause, creative, 
making its own world, not made by it. And even 
the dullest mind is fascinated and awed by these 
Shakspearean pictures of personality unfolding to- 
wards the infinite. 

But Shakespeare is intensely realistic also. A 
famous critic has objected tO' his dramas that they 
contain no heroes.' But heroes in Ruskin's sense 
live only in dreamland. There are countless millions 
of men and women capable of heroic deeds, but still 
all come from the common clay. So Shakspeare 
paints men just as they are as — Herder said — 
"lusty and sensual, but at the same time longing 
for a deeper truth and a purer happiness." ^ 

Cervantes. Perfect art then is the dim revela- 
tion of the harmony underlying the changes and 
contrasts of life; and one of her favorite means is 
that sense of humor which finds beauty even in 
things that seem utterly incongruous and absurd. 
Shakspeare had this gift of humor in very high de- 
gree; but its special representative was his con- 
temporary, Cervantes. Few have drunk deeper from 
the cup of misery than this greatest of all Spaniards 

272 



MODERN ART 

— captured by corsairs, held a slave in Africa for 
years, ransomed only to live a life of adversity and 
to be buried in a pauper's grave. But he had that 
sense of humor which out of wormwood and ashes 
distilled a beauty that has ever since delighted the 
world. 

Humor, said one of its greatest masters, is love. 
Wit is the barbaric delight in results that come 
abruptly, unexpected incongruities, sudden but not 
serious mishaps. But humor is causal ; it reminds 
us of the mystical forces that bind men together 
despite their follies and blunders; it transforms the 
crude cruelty of wit, satire, jest and jeer with the 
magic touch of sympathy. 

We can readily comprehend, then, I think, why 
Greek and Roman literature vvith all their glories, 
were devoid of true humor, never rose beyond satire 
and biting epigram. We can also' comprehend why 
the world's greatest humorist should have appeared 
in the latter half of the sixteenth century when the 
two great tendencies stood so closelv balanced in 
European thought. 

11. The Classical Period 

The era of Shakespeare and Cervantes was soon 
ended ; that delicate equipoise of the twO' tendencies 
could not long be maintained. Mediaeval memories 
faded ; the modern impulse — intent upon effects, 
external form, exact imitation — pursued its develop- 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

nient unchecked. Hence came the so-caUed classical 
period in modern literature. 

France. This period began earliest in France 
and there perfected its type in the noble figure of 
Corneille. Take one of his masterpieces, the Poly- 
euctes, for example, and note how classical or rather 
Roman it is ; its aim utilitarian, an attempt to glorify 
religion as it was then understood at Paris; its 
morality entirely Roman, a self-complacent and 
showy virtue bent upon being heroic at any cost ; 
its style fashioued after that of Seneca, dignified, a 
little stilted, addicted to epigram; its characters es- 
sentially abstract, personified attributes rather than 
real men or women. In fact, it is the summit of 
merely imitative art, brilliant, precise, eager for 
effects. And yet, as Lessing said : 'Tt is not 
tragedy. For the impression which French tragedy 
produces is so shallow, so cold."^ 

England. The English literature of this period 
follows the French model closely. Even the very 
form and structure of verse were remodelled. 
Shakspearean verse — ideal order veiled in seeming 
irregularity — gave way to the poetry of precision. 
All is exact and finished. Each couplet stands apart, 
self-sufficient in its meaning, perfect in its mechanical 
form. It was a return to Roman "elegance" and 
the classical delight in rhetoric. ''The seer disap- 
peared and the artificer took his place."'* Such was 
the age of modern classicism, an age when Gothic 
art had become a term of reproach,^ and when fa- 
mous leaders of thought disparaged the beauties of 

274 



MODERN ART 

the Elizabethan drama as "the bold flights of an 
undisciplined imagination.'"' 

Germany. A German historian declares that "in 
no other country did pseudo-classic literature reach 
the same depths of contemptibleness and absurdity as 
here." But as an alien not permitted to say such 
harsh things, let me pass on to a brighter though 
neglected aspect of German thought in that period. 

The people are the still depths of the sea; "the 
upper classes" are the waves and foam upon the sur- 
face swept by every passing wind of passion or folly. 
It was especially so in Germany during those dark 
days. German belles-lettres were indeed "the most 
depraved and abject mockery that ever usurped the 
name of literature." But down in the popular heart 
there still lingered that old mediaeval mysticism 
that inspired the genius of Luther. Except for a 
few religious hymns, however, the depths were for 
nearly two centuries silent until at last they found 
a sort of spokesman in Klopstock. As Schiller 
said, Klopstock "makes everything lead up to the 
iniinite." His chief work, the Messias, throbs with 
religious emotion; but it lacks some of the main 
essentials of true poetry, is obscure, inflated, un- 
natural. In fine, he is not a poet but a musician; 
"his place is by the side of Bach and Handel, the 
third great master of the oratorio." 

So far the Germans. I wish to add only that in 
this substitution of music for poetry, Klopstock is the 
fore-runner of the literary movement of the nine- 
teenth century. 

. 275 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

III. The Nineteenth Century. s 

With the close of the French Revolution there 
began a great emotional outburst against that ten- 
dency which had ruled the previous three centuries 
with ever increasing force. The world had grown 
weary of perpetual protesting and doubt, of an 
endless insurrection that led to nothing but increase 
of misery. And so there rose a great reactionary 
movement— -a longing for some golden past. This 
movement had two phases, of which I wish tO' speak 
briefly. 

Romanticism. The first phase was a craving for 
the return of the Middle Ages. One of the best 
known of the Romanticists, Novalis, has embodied 
the whole spirit of the movement in his vision of 
the coming kingdom of "sacred darkness."'^ The 
lights of science were to be put out and mystery 
wa,s to reign. A von Schlegel demanded "that 
astronomy should become astrology again. "^ An- 
other of the same school maintained that the alche- 
mists possessed more of the true scientific spirit than 
the present day. Even the men of the Renaissance 
are too modern to- satisfy these adorers of the past ; 
"with Raphael and Michel Angelo," says Friedrich 
Schlegel, "begins the decay of art."'' 

But we need not dwell upon such foolishness. 
The one thing to be noticed is that these men who 
imagine themselves in love with the Middle Ages 
are really modern individualists of the wildest type.^** 
I'hey are in open, often vile revolt against almost 

276 



MODERN ART 

everything which the Middle Ages held sacred. 
In fact, there seemed a sort of craziness about this 
Romanticism — men conversing with the diseased 
products of their own imagination and supposing 
them to be the sages and heroes of the past. 

Illusionisfn. Another ingredient injected into 
Romanticism was the Hindu doctrine of Maya. 
Now, I shall not review the discussion concerning 
the truth of this theory, at least until some one has 
made some headway against what seems to me the 
unanswerable argument given in the first chapter 
of this volume"^to wit, that we know nothing 
of our perceptions except through the spatial and 
temporal attributes of objects perceived, which attri- 
butes, according to Kant, do not exist; in other 
words, illusionism logically developed is nihilism. 
My only concern here is to point out the great 
superiority of the Hindu doctrine over its modern 
imitation. For, the Vedanta system, with all its 
vagaries, never flung away the ancient Hindu faith 
in the moral order of the world; for on Karma, 
the ieternal chain of moral causes and effects it made 
the whole universe depend; the deeds of souls "de- 
mand for their atonement the repeated creation of the 
universe."^^ Do you say that that is absurd, a silly 
superstition? I answer that then modern thought 
in accepting Indian illusionism was sO' much the 
more obligated to find a better basis for morality. 
And that to my knowledge it has never done. Kant 
merely asserts, without seriously attempting to prove, 
that morality forms an exception to the universal 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

illuslonism. With Fichte and Hegel ethics have 
dwindled to politics — inflamed in the case of the 
former by German hatred for France and Napoleon. 

Furthermore, this Romantic subjectivism seems to 
me in too many cases tainted with insincerity. Fa- 
miliar words are used — such as God, freedom, im- 
mortality, etc. — but the meaning placed upon them is 
exactly the reverse of the older meaning.^'" This 
studied ambiguity is certainly pestilential. Honest 
atheism is infinitely better than pretended piety. 

Such then was the literary movement of the nine- 
teenth century — an emotional outbreak against the 
utilitarian, greedy, skeptical individualism of the 
modern era. As thus exclusively emotional it was 
ephemeral and inefficient, without logic, plan or 
purpose, without deep insight into social causes or 
sure vision of future results. Necessarily it could 
accomplish but little. As we have seen even the 
Romanticists themselves are intensely individualist; 
they simply chafe against chains which they cannot 
break. 

But the Italian Renaissance was still more wildly 
emotional, and yet it proved tO' be the prelude to 
the Reformation. And in the same way, I think, this 
romanticism of the last century will prove tO' be the 
herald of a still grander reformation in the present 
one, 

IV. Painting. 

We have seen that Greece gave to the world the 
first and greatest of all artistic lessons by showing 

278 



MODERN ART 

the infinite capabilities of form as a revealer of 
beauty/^ It was reserved for the Italian Renaissance 
and the Modern Age to- fully unfold the capabilities 
of color and of sound. 

Rembrandt. It is universally agreed that the 
resources of painting were very greatly increased 
by Rembrandt's discovery of the wonderful aesthetic 
potencies lodged in the light. The movement of 
art in this respect was closely parallel to that of 
scientific research where, as we have shown, new 
sciences have sprung into being through the disclo- 
sure of some previously neglected factor. Rem- 
brandt, by his marvellous management and focusing 
of the light in his great masterpieces, revealed what 
had been virtually as much a neglected factor in 
painting as the atmosphere was for centuries in 
chemical experiment. It was his glory to have first 
divined that " the simplest color is infinitely complex, 
that every visual sensation is the product of its ele- 
ments coupled with its surroundings, that each object 
in the field of sight is but a single spot modified by 
others, and that in this wise the principal feature of 
a picture is the ever-present, trumulous colored 
atmosphere in which figures are plung^ed like fishes 
in the sea."^'- 

The Beauty of Common Life. Rembrandt made 
another priceless gift to art by revealing beauty in 
the life of the poor and lowly. The theme of Greek 
art is man under extraordinary conditions, a human- 
ized divinity, a hero, an athlete crowned in the 
games : the beauty which it finds is that of external 

279 



THE PHILOSOPHY' OF HISTORY 

or accidental circumstances. But Protestant indi- 
vidualism in its earlier years was very different 
from the Greek, because it had inherited from the 
Middle Ages the conviction that even in the lowliest 
and most squalid conditions of human life there was 
a certain aspect of divineness like that of golden light 
raying through the darkness of a dungeon. Rem- 
brandt, a mystic, himself a man of sorrow, saw this 
beauty of common life as no' other painter ever saw 
it. And it is this dim suggestiveness, this faint 
gleam of an ineffable beauty amid what would 
otherwise have seemed low and ugly, which gives to 
his art its incomparable power of stimulating the 
imagination and stirring the emotions. 

Landscape Painting. We have shown that the 
mediaeval emphasis upon causality — as well as the 
Indian — had led to the love of nature — a sentiment 
altogether lacking in classical art. But here, as 
everywhere else, the Middle Ages were so much 
engrossed with the cause as to neglect the results. 
They were so absorbed with religion — with adora- 
tion of the infmite and the supernatural — that they 
paid little attention to those natural processes of 
causation through which the Infinite Cause is mani- 
fested to man. Hence, in art they did precisely as 
they did in science — left for future ages the search- 
ing out, the defining and comprehending of those 
natural processes of causation which are the real 
intermediaries between the infinite cause and, the 
finite effects. 

So landscape-painting was reserved for the 
280 



MODERN ART 

moderns; not a slavish imitation or photographing 
of natural things, but the dim revelation of the 
majesty and divineness veiled in the humblest pro- 
cess of nature. When, for example, a great land- 
scape-painter like Dupre would paint a forest scene 
he selects " not the great free, broad-armed, vigorous 
oaks of Brittany, but the poor, little, misshaped, 
obstinate, sad trees of the arid soil that only half- 
nourishes. The land is sadder still with its autumn 
dryness and burnt surfaces. "^^ But in that deserted 
land there is a beauty dolorous and yet divine — 
very much akin to the beauty in the life of the lowly. 

Oil Painting. This development of landscape 
painting was greatly aided by the invention of colors 
in oil. Thus the canvas took the place of church- 
walls, art became less mystical, more domestic, 
descended to earth and its beauties. Among its 
technical advantages there was one of supreme im- 
portance; it -has well been said that "the use of oil 
colors has given the power of almost unlimited cor- 
rection." The artist is no longer forced to rely 
wholly upon the swift, elusive processes of imagina- 
tion ; he can observe the visible results or effects he 
has achieved, can adjust and rectify them at his will. 
In fine. Experiment, the very soul of the scientific 
method, is added to the resources of art. 

Tke Declension of Art. The modern movements 
in art and that in science, up to a certain point have, 
as we have shown, the closest parallelism. Both have 
their sources and their inspiration from the mediaeval 
faith in the infinite, self-sacrificing Cause of all. 

281 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

During the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries 
they move on together, covered with an equal glory. 
But since then science has still gone on, but art has 
not even stood still, it has gone backward. How 
now shall the philosophy of history explain this 
great difference? From our present point of view 
the answer is simple and evident. Even after the 
old faith in the Infinite had decayed, physical science 
could still verify its predictions and that was all 
it sought. But without that faith, art was a flower 
cut from its stem and it has been withering ever 
since. 

NOTES 

^ Shaw, Dramatic Opinions, II., is my anthority as to Ruskin's criticism. 

^ Francke, Hist. German Literature, 324. 

" Hanib, Dramat., st 73. Cf. Francke, Hist. German Lit., 276. 

* Gosse, From Shakspeare to Pope, 221. 

E Fowler, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, 132. 

" Dugald Stewart, Life of Adam Smith, p. XLVI. Smith thought 

rhyme above blank verse and placed the French dramatists above 

Shakespeare. 
■^ Brandes, Main Currents of igtii Centidry Literature, II. 194. 

* Ibid, 227. 

^ Ibid, p. 138. At the same time Schlegel confesses that he had never 
seen any of Michel-Angelo's works. 

1" Francke (Hist. Gcr. Lit., p. 424-8) very neatly exhibits the antag- 
onism between mediiEval and Romantic thought. 

11 Book I, Ch. I, Sec. V. 

^- Deussen, The Vedanta System, 20. 

^^ Consult McTaggart, The Cosmology of Hegel from beginning to end. 
Also Brandes, Main Currents, VI. 14, and Mackintosh, Hegel, 260. 

■^i-Book II, Chap. IV, Sec. II. 

IS Taine, Lectures on Art, II. 339. 

1" Potter, Art of Louvre, 397-8. 



282 



CHAPTER V 

SOCIAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE REFORMATION 

I. Modern Liberty 

The fierce, blood-stained dispute concerning lib- 
erty which has been prolonged through so many 
centuries seems now to be crystallizing into a gen- 
eral opinion that human nature is a mixture of two 
hopelessly antagonistic principles, the one a uni- 
fying social or collectivist tendency, the other an 
isolating individualism. But their hopeless antag- 
onism, I deny sturdily. The problem of their recon- 
ciliation can be solved, precisely as we have solved 
so many other problems — by reverting to the funda- 
mental law of thought. The unifying, organizing 
impulse is the cause, liberty the result. 

Note further that the above generalization is an 
experimentally verifiable one. The cause and the 
ettect become tests of each other. All history shows 
that the unifying which leads to bondage is a sham 
and that the liberty which springs from savage iso- 
lation or disunion is a fraud. 

Religions Liberty. Let us consider chiefiy the 
second part of the thesis just given, the genesis of 
freedom from unity. No real liberty is gained by 

283 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

merely breaking old bonds unless new and holier 
bonds of unity are substituted in their place. Take 
the Reformation in Germany for instance. All 
would have been well if religious liberty could have 
drawn its strength from a deeper sense of unity, 
of human brotherhood, of the equality before God 
of all souls, prince or peasant. But in leaning 
upon the support of the princelets, making them 
the arbiters of faith and conscience the Germans 
merely exchanged one tyranny for a meaner one. 
Never had there been so little true freedom of con- 
science, so- much sectarian hate, persecution, and 
bloodshed in Christ's name as in the seventeenth 
century. And the final result of it reached in the 
next century was irreligious rather than religious 
liberty — the mere toleration of indifference. 

English Liberty. Continental writers have some- 
times scoffed at the English Revolution as a mere 
struggle for rights of property instead oi the rights 
of nian. But that is only blindness to my principle 
that true liberty and progress spring solely from 
the substitution of nobler bonds of unity for baser 
ones. In the first half of the seventeenth century 
England, like almost every other European land, 
was a militar)^ despotism; brute force ruled both 
state and church, body and soul. The only effective 
bond of unity in those divided, distracted times was 
the royal army. But ever since the opening of the 
New World commerce had been making great 
strides ; England was growing rich through the 
trade she had wrested from Italian and German 

284 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE REFORMATION 

cities ; even her nobility were immensely more com- 
mercial than militant, and the middle class or trades- 
men were steadily rising in wealth and power. And 
the English Revolution was the triumph of this 
commercialism over the old militarism. 

I am certainly not over-fond of commercialism. 
Nevertheless it is a better bond of unity than mili- 
tarism. Peace is better than war; and it is not so 
bad even to bribe men as to cut their throats. Of 
the vices' inherent in commercialism we shall speak 
hereafter; it is enough here to see that the English 
Revolution verifies our law of progress and liberty. 

The French Revolution. Our law is as fully 
verified by the failure of the French as by the suc- 
cess of the English Revolution. France in the last 
decades of the eighteenth century was in a state of 
incredible disunity. Not only was one class arrayed 
against another but each class was at war with 
itself. In the church the lower clergy were enven- 
omed against the dignitaries, while the latter looked 
down with haughty scorn upon their inferiors. The 
nobility were split into countless clans ; in one small 
town there were thirty-six bodies of nobles ; ^ be- 
sides there was a chronic quarrel between the newly 
created and the older nobles as well as between the 
rural nobility and the courtiers. There was also 
a bitter antagonism between the city and the coun- 
try. "Nothing is more striking throughout the 
eighteenth century," De Tocqueville says, "than the 
hostility of the citizens of the towns towards the 
surrounding peasantry and the jealousy felt by the 

285 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

peasants towards the town people." ^ And in the 
towns the middle class abused and pillaged the lower 
orders: according to Turgot they had even found 
means to so regulate the octrois that the burdens 
thereof fell not upon themselves but upon the poor. 
Everywhere division and rancor reigned. There 
was even a curious contrariety of institutions — con- 
stant collision between diverse systems of laws, 
courts that contradicted each other, conflicting 
methods of taxation and finance.^ 

Furthermore, commerce in France was limited 
and had never gained the controlling power which 
it had in England. Religion and morals also had 
become very feeble bonds of unity. In line, there 
was no real unifying force in French life except 
that militarism which had been developing for cen- 
turies. And so it happened that the French revolu- 
tionary movement soon proved to be only this old 
militarism disguised in new republican forms; and 
quickly growing tired of its disguise, it glided easily 
into Napoleonic imperialism. 

Comte, Taine and many others have tried to solve 
the hard problem of the French Revolution as fail- 
ing on account of its devotion to impossible gen- 
eralities. But that I deem little less than treason 
to humanity. Liberty, equality and fraternity may 
seem far-away ideals at present, but they are not so 
much beyond us as we think. And 1 believe that 
they will begin to draw near when men begin to 
recognise that unity and true individualism are not 
opposites or contradictories, but cause and effect. 

286 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE REFORMATION 

To make this clearer will be the chief object of 
our remaining pages. 

II. Supremacy of the Commercial Class 

We turn now from the political or external struc- 
ture of society to that which most fully expresses 
its inner life — the industrial movement. And here 
we are to find the most signal proof that the modern 
era, like -the classical, emphasizes results and ne- 
glects causes. For labor is the cause of wealth; 
that is, it is the human factor in the processes where- 
by wealth is produced. And this modern age has 
been ever more and more absorbed in the pursuit 
of wealth and correspondingly neglectful of the in- 
terests of labor. 

To prove this we have first to outline the gradual 
rise of the coriimercial class to supremacy over the 
entire industrial movement and thus indirectly over 
all social and political life. Commerce, of course, 
is a normal branch of industry having highly im- 
portant functions to perform. But what we have 
to show here is an overstepping of these proper 
functions, an usurpation whereby the trading class 
has become master of all industry, harvesting its 
gains and restricting the laborer to a bare subsist- 
ence. 

The Nezv World. The great maritime discov- 
eries poured a flood of wealth, especially of gold 
and silver, into Western Europe. Often a single 
venture with one of the great sea-captains would 

287 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

convert a petty trader into a merchant prince. Prices 
rose rapidly. A fever of speculation set in. Bar- 
gaining so carefully restricted in the Middle Ages, 
became wonderfully free; everything was for sale. 
In England under the Stuarts, the highest places in 
the peerage could be purchased ; four earldoms were 
sold in a single year for £10,000 a piece.* In 
France even the judgeships were for sale in the 
open market. 

But this growth of commerce brought nothing but 
calamity to labor. The prices of commodities rose 
swiftly, but wages remained stationary ; in fact often 
fell. Every effort was made to keep them down; 
for instance, an old statute against combinations to 
raise wages, that had been a dead letter for nearly 
two centuries was revived and enforced with the 
utmost rigor. These efforts were so successful that 
by the middle of the seventeenth century the wages 
of English workingmen were virtually little more 
than one-fourth of what had been earned by their 
grandfathers ^ and great-grandfathers. 

That single fact gives more insight into the mod- 
ern social movement than reading a hundred vol- 
umes of memoirs. Wealth increasing, but wages 
virtually reduced to one-fourth of what they had 
been. Results glorified, but the cause thereof des- 
pised and degraded. 

Usury. Another great boon to the trading class 
was the legalizing of usury or interest. The laws 
against usury in the Middle Ages were not a mere 
whim of priests and scholastics; on the contrary, 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE REFORMATION 

the people heartily approved of them and often 
fumed against the ecclesiastical courts for being too 
lax in enforcing them. So' late as the hfteenth cen- 
tury we find the English Commons making frecjuent 
complaints about this laxity. But suddenly some- 
where between the years 1570 and 1595, public 
sentiment veered around. Henceforth usury was 
regarded as lawful and right. 

I am not so rash as to argue with our modern 
"economists" who have so ably refuted Jesus, to 
say nothing about Aristotle, Dante,^ Shakspeare and 
almost every other great mind that has expressed 
an opinion concerning usury. Doubtless usury 
promoted the prosperity of the usurers; I only object 
that no effort was made to check its ruinous action 
upon the common people. The Middle Ages had 
done this by fostering industrial associations among 
workingmen, but these the Protestant era discour- 
aged and ultimately destroyed.'^ 

And generall}^ not only in the modern but in 
ever}^ age, it is not the ruling tendency in itself 
which is bad. For example it is well that men should 
seek after wealth, the storing of God's bounty. The 
curse lies in that madness for results which makes 
us forget the true causes — that passion for gather- 
ing the harvest in our own private little barns which 
makes us trample under foot those that have really 
done the ploughing, the sowing and the reaping^. 

Agriculture. The agricultural life of Western 
Europe during the modern era still more vividly 
evinces this mad greed for gain and crushing" of 

289 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

labor. The mediseval tenures of land were based 
upon the principle of co-operative industry. The 
lord with his retainers served by battle and protec- 
tion, the peasant by tilling the fields. Each had 
his hereditary rights in the soil and shared in the 
produce according to his needs. Hardly an acre 
in Western Europe was held in perfect fee simple. 
But the Protestant age introduced a new order of 
things. The lord of the manor began to assert abso- 
lute ownership and the peasant or yeoman soon 
sank to the level of a day-laborer. The English 
landlords, for example, found it profitable to con- 
vert most of the tillage lands into pasture; then 
only a few of the former cultivators were needed as 
shepherds, and the rest were driven forth to become 
involuntary vagabonds. The statutes of Henry VIH. 
speak of "such a destruction and pulling down of 
towns that where once were two or three hundred 
persons there were now but two or three herds- 
men."' ^ The noblest minds in England inveighed 
against these evil changes. "It is contrary to the 
laws of God and man," said Sir Thomas More, 
"for each to seek his own profit independently of 
the profit of the commonwealth." 

But it was like preaching to the winds. For a 
phrensy of greed possessed the ruling classes in 
England. To drive the peasant from his home, they 
hesitated at nothing — threats, violence, fraud, per- 
jury ; if they were convicted of these villainies, they 
were soon pardoned ; and then, as Commissioner 
Hales declared, "they returned at once to their 

290 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE REEOKMATION 

vomit." ^ In the meantime Parliament did nothing 
for the dispossessed peasants except to liound them 
with harsher laws ; if these laws had been fully car- 
ried out, we are told, the poor wretches would have 
been reduced to slavery/*^ And what perhaps is 
the most notable fact of all even such an eminent 
"Radical" as Bentham was delighted with this 
deviltry. He declares himself "enchanted" by "this 
happy change. '^ * '^ Happy conquests of peaceful 
industry; etc."^^ 

German Agriculture. The same dismal revolu- 
tion went on in Germany. At the close of the Mid- 
dle Ages most of the German land was virtually in 
the hands of tenants holding by a perpetual heredi- 
tary right, the lords of the soil merely receiving rent 
or service.^^ This rent was not onerous : in Austria 
it was restricted to twelve days' work in the year." 
The tenants are personally free; and "their position 
is so good that sometimes a poor nobleman gives 
his daughter in marriage to a rich peasant whose 
children look upon themselves as half-noble.^"* 

But already in the fifteenth century the peasants 
stood in mortal fear of that Roman law which the 
princes were striving to introduce as a defense of 
their despotism.^^ In the next century the blow 
fell. In 1 5 19 the Bavarian code abrogated the 
hereditary right of the peasants to their holdings. 
In Westphalia we find the word slavery first in 
1558; serfdom also was unknown before the six- 
teenth century. In Mecklenburg-Schwerin a decree 
of 1606 proclaims in Roman parlance that the peas- 

291 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

ants were not emphyteutae but coloni — not heredi- 
tary possessors but tenants at will — although their 
ancestors had held the same pieces of land from 
time immemorial. So everywhere the mediaeval 
system of agrarian partnership was breaking up. 
The greed of a false individualism was being sub- 
stituted for the co-operative industry of the Middle 
7\ges. 

Manufactures. The inventive genius of man has 
also been perverted into a means for enormously 
increasing the wealth and establishing the suprem- 
acy of the trading class. By inventions the produc- 
tive capacity of labor has been wonderfully multi- 
plied; in some cases even a hundred fold. But of 
this immense increase the laborer has received but 
a minute fragment ; the bulk of it has been diverted 
into the coffers of the capitalist. The "economists" 
tell us that the workingmen have also profited, that 
they now enjoy some comforts denied them in the 
past. That is to say, the laborer is only a Lazarus, 
feeding upon the crumbs from. Dives' table; let the 
beggar rejoice, that as the feast of life grows more 
sumptuous the crumbs become more abundant. 

But let these old economic sophistries go. For 
commercialism itself has already confessed their fool- 
ishness. The capitalists have discovered that mere 
individualism in and for itself means nothing but 
anarchy and ruin, that it is useful only in so far 
as it springs from a principle of unity. Hence trade 
is now swiftly organising itself into those great 

292 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE REFORMATION 

monopolies wherein the interest of the individual is 
the interest of all. 

Thus my solution of the much discussed "social 
problem" is a very simple one. Let labor organise 
itself as the soldiers have done for thousands of 
3^ears and as the traders now are doing. To' this 
matter we shall return. 

The Grozvtli of Cities. The modern massing of the 
people in cities is generally ascribed to such inci- 
dental "causes as the factory system and improved 
means of communication. No one seems to attend 
to the fact that this centralization went on even more 
rapidly during the first Protestant century than 
since, although then there were neither factories nor 
railroads. Thus from 1535 to 1660 the population 
of London increased from 65,000 to 575,000; nearly 
nine-fold in little more than a century.^"' There has 
been no such rate of growth since. Furthermore 
during that period the entire population of England 
increased only 130,000. The rural regions were 
being depopulated in order to swell the crowds 
rushing to London. 

Nor was it any true social impulse that thus led 
men to herd in the cities. They were mainly the 
poor and oppressed — forlorn- peasants driven from 
their little rural communities and seeking shelter in 
the crowd. So the swine on a freight car in 
winter-time pile up together and crush each other — 
half-frozen beasts seeking for warmth. That men 
did not thus huddle together from any true social 

293 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

instinct is further shown by the fact that mediaeval 
civiHsation was pre-eminently rtu'al ; and yet the 
mediaeval man was through and through collectivis- 
tic, "he hardly existed as an individual, but only as 
a member of some corporate body." " And thus, 
I think, what may have seemed a paradox is fully 
explained. The growth of the cities at the expense 
of the country — both in the classical and modern 
era — was directly due to the increase of commer- 
cialism; and commercialism or the greed of gain 
is the final, most complete expression of engross- 
ment with results. 

Nor is there really any economic advantage in 
this huddling of the workers in the cities but enor- 
mous losses and evils. Industry ought to be dis- 
tributed far and wide where there are coal-fields, 
water-power, raw material, abundance of food, play- 
grounds, gardens, forests, pure air and all the joys 
of nature. But in America, the most modern and 
"progressive" of countries, the great manufacturing 
centres are on the barren seacoast singularly devoid 
of all these requisites for industry and human glad- 
ness. 

Normal Trade. Finally let it be understood that 
my induction implies not the least bias against nor- 
mal trade — the honest exchange and distribution of 
goods for a fair compensation. The trader too is a 
laborer and is worthy of his hire. But when he 
grows so engrossed with pecuniary results that he 
forgets the other laborers who are the true pro- 
ducing cause, regards them only as means to his 

294 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE REFORMATION 

own selfish ends, degrades them into mere tools to 
be used for his private gain, then he becomes a rob- 
ber. Furthermore, trade offers far greater facilities 
than any other industrial pursuit for thus betraying 
the common interests of labor; with strange 
prescience language long ago framed the two words, 
traitor and trader, from the same root. Therefore 
a class so sorely tempted will always need strict sur- 
veillance. We need not, however, go so far as the 
Middle Ages which seem to have generally con- 
curred with the saying of Freidank, the famous Ger- 
man poet : "Three classes, peasants, knights and 
clergy, were founded by God; the fourth or trading- 
class were created by the devil." ''^ 

III. The Disintegration of Labor 

The modern age, then, has lifted the trading-class 
into the supreme control and virtual ownership of 
all industry. Furthermore it has disintegrated 
labor ; first by overthrowing the mediaeval organisa- 
tion of industry, and afterwards by the persistent 
opposition of the state and the trading-class to every 
attempt on the part of the toiling multitudes to re- 
cover their lost unity. 

It is not meant that the modern era has been 
openly or even consciously hostile to labor and its 
interests. That, of course, would be an absurd 
charge. The real sin of the modern age has been 
one-sidedness and neglect. It has made wealth the 
supreme and labor only a secondary consideration; 

295 



The philosophy of history 

and hence it has not favored and often bitterly op- 
posed whatever did not seem to concur with its rul- 
ing passion. 

Destruction of the Guilds. Even in its pre-natal 
period, so to speak, the Protestant impulse seems 
to have had an instinctive dislike to industrial organi- 
zation. At least the first known traces of hostility 
to the guild system are to be found in the writings 
of the Hussites and other precursors of the Refor- 
mation. ^'^ The same feeling- gave rise to that blackest 
blot upon the fair fame of Luther — his horrible 
malignity towards the peasants who revolted in 
order to save their communal rights. He calls 
them "brands of hell" ; urges men "to strike them 
down, throttle and stab them in secret or in public : 
They are like mad dogs who must be killed in self- 
defense. * ^ * A prince can now deserve mercy 
better by shedding blood than others by prayer." 
And years afterward he — a peasant's son himself — 
wrote : "All their blood is on my head, for I bade 
that they be struck down; but I put it all -onto our 
Lord God who commanded me thus to speak !"^" 
After the Reformation a similar feeling began to 
show itself in the spoliation of the guilds and an- 
nulment of their charters. In England the craft- 
guilds perished utterly; only those that had been or 
were on the point of being transformed into com- 
mercial corporations, were permitted to live. In- 
deed, the only friends of the poorer classes seem to 
have been reactionaries like the Stuart monarchs for 
example. ^^ 

296 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE REFORMvVTION 

On the continent the guilds preserved the shell 
of organisation, but their inner life as a brother- 
hood of toil was destroyed. They were deprived of 
their autonomy."" And that during the Middle 
Ages had been the crown of their glory and the 
secret of their power.^^ They lived on as mere in- 
struments through which the government secured 
control and espionage over industry.""^ Thus the 
true mediseval guilds vanished. Once they were 
everywhere. In England up to a comparatively re- 
cent period, vestiges of their halls were still visible 
even in the hamlets of the agricultural laborers. 

The Factory System. Then, when the working- 
men had been rendered utterly defenseless, the fac- 
tory system was inaugurated. The ensuing hor- 
rors are simply indescribable. As late as 1830 mul- 
titudes of weavers, for example, lived in the vilest 
holes; worked fourteen hours a day and upwards; 
and earned from five to eight shillings a week.""' 
For sixty years in the squalid pestilential alleys of 
the great manufacturing towns there went on a 
tragedy of want and pain and woe — of .ruin to 
body and soul — that makes the French "Reign of 
Terror ■' seem a very trivial affair. The most damn- 
ing of all its villainies was the slaughter of the chil- 
dren. Children from five to^ ten years old were 
hired out as factory hands by written contract and 
for long periods. They worked from twelve to six- 
teen hours a day, "not unfrequently during the 
greater part of the night. "^"^ And the most emi- 
nent and honored Englishmen seemed to glory in 

297 



;f' fifiy ■'•,f'4:'-|'"t' 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

this shame. Pitt especially used to wax eloquent in 
describing "the advantages" of infant labor. 

But even the worm will turn. And the English 
Parliament in the latter part of the eighteenth cen- 
tury was forced to spend much thought and care 
in crushing the c-ombinations of workingmen. For 
a long time this had been accomplished by means 
of a forced construction placed upon an ancient 
statute by subservient judges. Parliament con- 
tented itself with now and then enacting a special 
statute against some particular craft that seemed 
bent upon uniting for self -protection. 

Trade Unions. But at the close of the eighteenth 
century "out of a population of 8,870,000 in Eng- 
land and Wales not less than 1,234,000 were partak- 
ers of parochial relief," or practically were paupers. ^^ 
And a still vaster multitude stood all their lives on 
the ragged edge of the same pauperism. Work- 
ingmen had fallen into such depths of destitution 
and misery that in sheer desperation the}^ began to 
multiply fraternities for relief and protection. 

The trading class was seized with a panic at the 
thought of being thus deprived of their opportuni- 
ties for plunder. And consequently in the year 1799 
an Act of Parliament was passed, prohibiting under 
heavy penalties of fine and impiisonment all com- 
binations of workingmen for an increase of wages. 
Thus industrial organisation which the Middle 
Ages had regarded as a religious duty, was con- 
demned as a crime. 

Thus again we see the close parallelism between 
298 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE REFORMATION 

the modern and the Roman movement. But the 
infamy of England was greater because she claimed 
to love liberty while the Romans were honest enough 
tO' renounce such hypocrisy. 

Still the labor unions were not completely crushed. 
They managed to meet now and then in subterranean 
places or some moonless night out on a lonely moor. 
When the meeting broke up, the records were bur- 
ied, lest they should be seized by the officers of the 
law and used as evidence against the unhappy work- 
ingmen.^^ 

In 1825 this infamous statute was repealed. Other 
methods of repression had been invented, equally 
effective and less openly violating those principles 
of justice and liberty which all England pretended 
to venerate. Human law has a wondrous flexibility 
of interpretation; and under pressure from the all- 
powerful trading class the judges placed new con- 
structions upon ancient statutes. Especially the 
law against conspiracy was perverted into an en- 
gine for the destroying of the labor unions or de- 
feating their righteous aims. Thus harassed by the 
judges, the trading class and public prejudice, in- 
dustrial unity made but slow headway. 

Nineteenth Century Emotionalism. Already we 
have pointed out the close parallelism between the 
Renaissance and the nineteenth century. Each was 
an era of emotional revolt against the then prevail- 
ing tendency ; the one against mediaeval superstition, 
the other against modern inhumanity and greed. 

The nineteenth century movement undoubtedly 
299 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

aided the cause of industrial unity, helped to in- 
crease the number, prestige and power of the labor 
unions. But mere emotionalism can never rise very- 
far beyond sentimental vaporing and futile protest; 
and so the final outcome of the nineteenth century 
movement seems to have been to divide rather than 
to unite labor — especially to widen the chasm of 
suspicion and hostility between the agricultural and 
artisan classes. For example a recent writer in the 
supposed interests of the city workers predicts a 
"re volution". near at hand wherein the farmers will 
be left "severely alone," until by the pressure of 
the new regime they shall be forced to give up 
their lands. Thus the right wing in the army of 
labor is to gain a great victory by cutting the throats 
of their comrades in the left wing. 

Such projects are born of that low, sordid en- 
grossment with mere results that rules the age. We 
see in industrial unity nothing but a possible means 
of pecuniary profit — an expedient that may add a 
few pennies to the daily wage. We have not begun 
to comprehend the potencies in it for the education, 
the deliverance, the uplifting of mankind. 

Socialism. The same tendency rules and vitiates 
the socialistic movement now advancing with such 
giant strides. New Utopias are being invented al- 
most every day, but under criticism they all dissolve 
into impossible dreams. How indeed could it be 
otherwise ? Life has become so incredibly complex, 
that no human genius can forecast the social de- 
mands of the future. And even if the plans of the 

300 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE REFORMATION 

new social structure were let down to us out of 
heaven, like the ancient vision of the City of God, 
where is the power, the unanimity of will, the or- 
ganised zeal which alone could realize them ? 

The true solution of the socialistic problem, for 
the present at least, lies in the organization of in- 
dustry. Instead of being engrossed with uncertain 
results, instead of idly dreaming about an unknown 
future, we must learn to recognise in united labor 
the mightiest and most majestic of all finite causes. 
Then we shall have, 4-ight at our hands, a power 
strong enough to cope with all opposition and wise 
enough to gradually build up a new social structure 
in the place of the present one which is so visibly 
honey-combed with injustice, fraud and all manner 
of iniquities. 

Democracy. But may not all this be achieved 
by a democratic form of government as well as by 
the organisation of labor? I answer that democ- 
racy, except in a vision, has never yet existed on 
this globe. Instead of it we have had a burlesque — 
government by parties, that is, by dividing the peo- 
ple into factions swayed b)^ prejudice, noise and 
humbug, ruled by "bosses" and the trading class. 
Genuine democracy will never come to this earth 
except through the thorough organisation of labor. 
Then each confraternity of toil would become a 
school for training in citizenship and for the dis- 
cussion of political affairs, not in the spirit of par- 
tisanship but in an atmosphere where everything 
tended to unity and good will. That divine passion 

301 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

of loyalty, so strong among the common people, in- 
stead of being wasted upon the politcal parties would 
be transferred to^ the universal brotherhood of toil. 
Every truly human interest, even that of the hum- 
blest craft, would find fit expression in the collective 
will. Then would come true what the Middle Ages 
first announced and what men have ever since been 
repeating parrot-like — that the voice of the people 
is the voice of God. 

IV. The Future 

According to the philosophy of history proved in 
these pages a new age is about to dawn, one ruled 
by the mediaeval — and Oriental — impulse of caus- 
ality. Not by any means that we are about to re- 
turn to the faults and follies of the Middle Ages, 
Christian regeneration clings to that which is of 
permanent value in the past; it is "a refiner's fire," 
purging the dross, retaining the gold. 

Now the gold in the modern intellectual move- 
ment has been its persistent demand for the defining 
and verifying of beliefs. Thereby the physical con- 
ceptions oi the Middle Ages, inaccurate and un- 
proved, resting only upon faith and blind submis- 
sion to authority, have been replaced by a vast body 
of exact and demonstrated truth to which we give 
the proud name of Science. But this very insistence 
upon exactitude and proof, which has wrought such 
wonders by the creation of physical science, has 
had a deadening influence on the moral and spiritual 

302 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE REFORMATION 

vigor of the modern age. In the field of ethics and 
rehgion there has been the same increasing demand 
for definiteness and demonstration; but there was 
none to be found. For the reality of moral obliga- 
tion the only proof offered has been declamatory 
appeals to "intuitions," "ethical postulates," or 
other empty phrases. Thus, as we have seen, the 
very basis of morality has been gradually under- 
mined. A secret, almost unconscious but deadly 
doubt has been everywhere diffused, even among 
the common people. For they, too, in these days read 
and reflect. They, too, distrust declamation, as- 
sumption, poetic metaphors, and are demanding 
proo'f. Hence ethical skepticism, oiice confined tOi the 
erudite and luxurious, is spreading among the poor 
and the oppressed. Who else, indeed, have sO' many 
seemingly good grounds as they for doubting the 
moral order of the world ? 

And a still greater calamity has strangely issued 
from this rigid insistence upon proof. It has not 
only undermined the basis of morality, but it is 
gradually effacing all distinctions between truth 
and falsehood. For the followers of Hegel and of 
Spencer, as well as the so-called Pragmatists, in 
fact, almost the entire body of present-day "philoso- 
phers," seem to unite in teaching that even every 
physical fact when thoroughly probed proves to be 
but an "example of that insoluble contradiction which 
underlies our conception of everything. "^^ Protag- 
oras and other Greek sophists preached that doc- 
trine long ago. But in their day there was no vision 

303 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

of the divine unity, of the Infinite, or even of 
physical science; so that our modern fah is far 
greater than theirs, because we have fallen from a far 
greater height. Is it any wonder then that men- 
dacity flourishes, that the age is fetid with fraud 
and chicanery? 

Such are some of the curious results that have 
sprung from themodern demand for the strict verify- 
ing of our beliefs. Nevertheless, this demand is indis- 
pensable and can never cease. It is impossible for us 
to revert to the blind faith and credulity of the Mid- 
dle Ages. Man, having' once been enlightened, will 
grow ever more and more unwilling tO' be convinced 
by mere authority, sentimentalism or empty phrases. 
I'herefore, if man is to remain moral and human 
progress is to continue, it is needful to fin.d some 
impregnable proof for the belief in the moral order 
of the world. 

That great need I believe this volume supplies. 
For four hundred years there has been a continually 
decreasing emphasis upon causality, until now for 
our philosophers the word means nothing but a 
uniform succession of events. But here I have 
entered upon a virtually new and untried way, but 
one prophetic of the new age and the future tendency 
of civilisation. In other words, I have restored the 
lost emphasis upon causality. Against Hume I 
have vindicated the causal conception by proving 
that it is implicit in all other concepts and that, 
therefore, its cancelling logically involves the col- 
lapse and extinction of all thought. 

304 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE REFORMATION 

From that demonstrated theorem, the moral order 
of the world is but a simple corollary. As has been 
shown the only complete cause in the strict sense of 
the term must be an Infinite Cause acting for the 
sake of others. All finite things are effects— factors 
in processes of causation which have their explana- 
tion only in the Infinite. And from this proved 
existence of an Infinite, loving Cause, the moral 
order of the world follows as a matter of course. 

The emphasis upon causality which is to rule the 
new age will, then, bring about two grand results : 
First, it will organize labor, thus lifting it into supre- 
macy above all other finite causes or factors that 
concur in the production of wealth, and so make 
possible the reign of justice and peace on earth. 
Second, it will give to morality a real foundation, 
a basis that is something more than vaporing and 
sentimentality. Each of these grand results is indis- 
pensable to the other. For, if no such real basis 
of morality can be found, then all effort for indus- 
trial unity and social reconstruction will be in vain. 
And, on the other hand, if a perfect system of 
morality should be carven in letters of gold upon 
the sky, it would have little influence over man, so 
long as social conditions remain as they are. 

SUMMARY 

What was promised at the outstart has, I think, 
been proved— that all thinking is a relating of cause 
and effect. Thus Hume's famous problem which has 

305 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

SO long barred all philosophic progress, has at last 
been solved ; it has been shown that in the very act 
of denying causality he is forced to affirm it over and 
over again. It has been further shown that the only 
complete causality must be that of the self-sacri- 
ficing Infinite; all finite things are but imperfect, 
partial causes, or rather factors in causal processes. 
And through that insight the true foundations both 
of ethical and social science have been revealed. 

Is there now any flaw in this argument? If there 
is, surely some one ought to be able and willing to 
point it out. If there is not, then a new epoch has 
opened in the history of human thought. 

NOTES 

'- De Tocqueville, France before the Revolution^ 149, seq. 

- Ibid, 80. 

3 Jenks, Law and Politics in the Middle Ages, 98. See also Maitlaiid^ 
English Law and the Renaissance, p. 66, where Voltaire's well- 
known sarcasm is quoted that he often changed laws when he- 
changed horses. 

* Gneist, Hist. English Constitution, II. 2^~- Note. 

5 Thorold Rogers, Work and Wages, 427. In 1495 an artisan could earn 
as much in 10 weeks as in a year at the close of the seventeenth- 
century, p. 398. 

" Dante {Inferno, XI. 33) defines usury as "contempt for industry." 
As usual he pierces to the essence of things. 

"^ Gasquet, Eve of the Reformation. The guilds of London were saved 
from the common destruction on the plea that they were only 
trading societies. 

^ Ashley, Eng. Economic History. 

^ Pollard, Factors in Modern History, 150. 

^° Ilcbhouse, Morals in Evolution, 322. "The historian of the Poor Law 
declares that with this act the iron of slavery entered into the sout 
of the English laborer." 

1^ Bentham, V/orks, I. 342; VIII. 449. 

^- Jannsen, Hist. German People, I. 311. 

^^ Ibid, 315. 

^^ Ibid, 313. 

^s The great majority of the professors and champions of the Roman- 

306 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE REFORMATION 



civil law, both in Germany and France, were Protestants or leaned 
that way. Notables example are Calvin, Beza and, especially, 
Melanchthon. See Maitland, English Law and the Renaisance, 13 
and 56. 

1" Sir Wm. Petty estimated it 1685 at 1,000,000. Sydney, Social Life 
in England, 1660-90. 

1^ Brunetiere. 

i' Scherer, Hist. German Literature, I. 216. This mediaeval depreciation 
of tlie trading class dates back to the primitive Christians. Hermas 
{Mand, III. 3) speaking of his own life asi a trader says: "Never 
yet in ray life have I spoken a true word." See Dobschutz, Chris- 
tian Life in the Primitive Church, 313 and 356. 

1* Schmolders, Die Strassbiirger Tucher und Weber Znnft, 114. A 
Hussite v/riter in 143S says: "Soil das Stadtsregiment wieder gut. 
Jedermann dem Anderen getreu und die Rath lauter werden so thate 
man die Zunfte ab." Another writer declares that the autonomy 
of the Guilds was more of a curse than a blessing. 

^'' Henderson, History of Germany, I. 321-3. 

-^ Urwin {Industrial Organisation in 16th and 17th Centuries, 143)' 
gives proof that "protecting the interests of the poorer industrial 
classes was a real motive of Stuart policy. 

22 Werner, Gesch. d. Iglauer Tuchmacher Zunft, 40. "Auch in Iglauer 
(1527) herrschte nach Niederwerfung des Revolution die Obrigkeit- 
liche Gewalt tinbedingt uber den Zunften." 
^2 Tagniez, Etudes siir I'Industrie a Paris au Xllle ef XlVe Siecle 36. 
"Les corporations d'artisans etaient independentes jusqu'a un certain 
point de I'etat . . . Elles nommaient assez frequement leurs,. 
magistrats investis quelquefois d'une jurisdiction professionelle et 
reglaient leur discipline interieure avec une liberte presque complet,, 
I'autorite publique se contentant generalment d'homologuer leurs 
statute. " Alsc p. 276, "Dans cette premiere periode de leur histoire 
les corporations parisiennes ne nous frappant que par leura 
bienfaits." 

^* Schulze-Gaevernitz, Der Grossgetrieb, 34, in Hobson's Modern Capi- 
talism, 77. A graphic picture of the politico-commercial control of 
industry on the continent. 

-5 Lecky, Hist. England in 18th Century, VI. 220-1. 

-^ Ibid, 224. 

-' Ibid, VI. 206. I quote so much from Lecky because he is so enthusi- 
astic over v/hat he calls "the growing freedom of English industry,, 
p. 237, etc. 

-■' Webb, Trade Unionism, 57 seq. 

-* Mallock, Reconsiruction of Religious Belief, 263. 



307 



The 

Philosophy of History 

By S. S. HEBBERD 



" It is, in fact, one of the most penetrating and illuminating phil- 
osophical-historical essays that have appeared for a long while. 
And its style indicates, to an uncommon degree, not only strong 
mastery of the theme, but a singularly fine self-mastery, which 
holds the author so perfectly to his single aim. One who reads 
intelligently this book, whether or not he accept fully the theory, 
will get a clew to modern thought and modern history he did 
not have, at least so clearly, before." — Chicago Tribune. 

■"A tremendous task is attempted here. . . . The book must 
be read to gain the author's conception and is sure to repay the 
reading." — Auburn Seminary Review. 

"' ' The Philosophy of History ' is a timely work and one that 
will be sought after by all students and lovers of history. In 
this work the author has given to the world a book that should 
bring him fame as a reward for a lifetime of labor spent in its 
preparation." — Southern Star, Atlanta, Ga. 

"A book into which a strong thinker has put a large part of the 
forces of his life is not to be set aside lightly. And this book 
will repay careful study." — Christian Century. 

"Its treatment of old problems is fresh, logical and in many 
respects convincing. Especially is this true of the chapters on 
classical and medieval art in which the fundamental law is 
admirably illustrated." — The Dial, Chicago. 

" This book is a noble contribution to the philosophy of history. 
We feel convinced that it will find its way to readers of every 
class." — New York World. 

THE MASPETH PUBLISHING HOUSE 

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